Performing Arts Composer Erik Satie French composer and writer, Erik Satie (1866-1925), was in kinship care from the age of 6 for 6 years. Erik was born in Honfluer, in France’s Normandy region, about 198km north-west of Paris. His father, Alfred, was French and his mother, Jane, was English. When Erik was about 4, the family moved to Paris, but Jane died 2 years later, in 1872. Erik and his young brother, Conrad, were sent back to Honfluer and lived with their paternal grandparents until their grandmother died in 1878. Alfred then had the children return to him in Paris and home schooled them. Satie lived in Paris during his adulthood. His eccentricities—which included wearing 1 of 7 identical grey suits for 10 years (purchased on receipt of a small inheritance in 1898) and a claim that he only ate food that was white—alienated him from the ‘establishment’. Where during his 20s he’d hung out with the ‘who’s who’ of Paris, in 1898 he moved into the unfashionable working class suburb of Arcueil, living there for 27 years in a small flat. Satie’s work did not catch on for some years, not until long-time friend Claude Debussy made popular his Gymnopedies in 1911, by which time Satie was 45 years old. Erik Satie is now regarded as a significant influence on 20th century music. External Website

Authors D Alan Duff ➝ Wayne Dyer ➝ Mary Douglas ➝ Trent Dalton ➝ Alan Dapré ➝ Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson ➝ Philip Doddridge ➝ Jenny Diski ➝ Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) ➝ Henry Darger (writer) ➝ Robert Dessaix ➝ Arthur Conan Doyle ➝ Charles Dickens ➝ René Descartes ➝ Stella Dadzie ➝ Back to Top

Children's Fiction Home For a While (4-8 years) Lauren Kerstein 2021 Natalia Moore (illustrator). Calvin is in foster care, and he wants to trust someone, anyone, but is afraid to open his heart. He has lived in a lot of houses, but he still hasn’t found his home. When he moves in with Maggie, she shows him respect, offers him kindness, and makes him see things in himself that he’s never noticed before. Maybe this isn’t just another house, maybe this is a place Calvin can call home, for a while. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Butterfly Lampshade Aimee Bender 2021 When Francie is 8 years old, her mother is institutionalised and Francie is sent to with relatives. 20 years later she maintains a relationship with the family who raised her and, sometimes, with her mother. She also begins to revisit what happened when she was 8. External Website

Academic Articles More Than Our Childhoods: A survivor-led participatory approach to out-of-home care life story research Amy Gill & Dee Michell 2025 More Than Our Childhoods: A survivor-led participatory approach to out-of-home care life story research (2025) by Amy Gill & Dee Michell has now been published. In this article, the authors present findings from an Australian research project, More Than Our Childhoods. Part of the project was to develop a develop a database to highlight the personal, political, & cultural achievements of Care Experienced People (CEP) to Australia. The authors conclude that “CEP in Australia have helped shape public policy and advance social progress. These contributions have been achieved through professional roles in frontline service delivery, research, and policy reform; grassroots activism and community engagement; and the influence of prominent figures in Australian popular culture who have helped shape public opinion.” External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Good Guy Susan Beale 2016 The Good Guy is inspired by Susan Beale's life. Beale was adopted as a baby and only reconnected with her birth mother several years ago. The inspiration for the book came from her adoption files. The papers include interviews with her mother, grandmother and one with her birth father. As well as helping Susan understand why she was adopted, the papers paint a portrait of America on the cusp of the sexual revolution. It’s a time of unprecedented prosperity and conformity. Young people enjoy new freedoms, but gender roles remain clearly defined and expectations of morality and purity are strictly, and sometimes cruelly, enforced. It’s a world about to be shaken to its core. In the novel, Ted, a car-tyre salesman in 1960s suburban New England, is a dreamer who craves admiration. His wife, Abigail, longs for a life of the mind. Single-girl Penny just wants to be loved. When a chance encounter brings Ted and Penny together, he becomes enamoured and begins inventing a whole new life with her at its centre. But when this fantasy collides with reality, the fallout threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear. External Website

Authors H The Mythmakers ➝ Back to Top

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Thousands of children adopted by Americans are without citizenship. Congress is unwilling to act ABC News (USA) 2024 According to this US article from ABC News, thousands of people who were adopted by Americans aren’t necessarily US citizens because “Adoption for decades did not automatically make children citizens”. Estimates range from 15,000 to 75,000 people who are might be affected and although many were adopted from South Korea, others were brought in from at least 24 other countries including Ethiopia and Romania. 2 of those adoptees have started the Adoptee Rights Campaign. The Campaign has heard from others “… who’d been deported, some still living in hiding, others freshly discovering they’d never been made citizens. There is no government mechanism for alerting them. They find out by accident, when applying for passports or government benefits. One woman learned as a senior citizen, when she was denied the Social Security she’d paid into all her life.” https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-doesnt-american-thousands-adoptees-live-limbo-citizenship-115130078 External Website

Writers Ronald Wilson Ronald Wilson (1922-2005) was born in Geraldton, Western Australia. His mother died when Ronald was 4 and he and his brother were mostly cared for by a housekeeper. Then when Ronald was 7, his father suffered a debilating stroke and spent the remaining 5 years of his life in hospice care. Ronald's older brother, then 14, began caring for the boy, along with the housekeeper. He enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1941 and then served in RAAF until 1946. Wilson graduated with a Bachelor of Law from the University of Western Australian in 1949, then studied for a Master in Law from the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson had a ten-year term as the Western Australian Solicitor-General and in 1979 became the first Western Australian to be appointed to the High Court of Australia. Amongst other publications, Sir Ronald Wilson is co-author (with Mick Dodson) of the hugely significant Bringing Them Home Report (1997), a report of the findings from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. External Website

Writers Dorothy Wordsworth 1771-1855 Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (1771 – 1855) was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives. Wordsworth had no ambitions to be a public author, yet she left behind numerous letters, diary entries, topographical descriptions, poems, and other writings. Dorothy was sent to live with her mother’s cousin, Elizabeth Threlkeld, in Halifax. According to Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, as she laying dying, Ann had begged her 33 year old cousin to take in Dorothy. Dorothy was happy in her new home and became part of a large extended family. Elizabeth Threlkeld was already caring for her older sister’s 5 children and she took over her brother-in-law’s haberdasher’s business when he died. Across the road was little Jane Pollard, the same age as Dorothy, and the two girls became lifelong friends. Dorothy was sent to boarding school just out of Halifax at the age of nine. She was only there for 3 years. Her father died intestate with only a small personal estate at the end of 1783 and to save money, the children’s guardians—paternal uncle Richard Wordsworth and maternal uncle Christopher Cookson—withdrew Dorothy from the school. Dorothy’s uncle William Cookson took the girl under his wing while home from Cambridge and continued with her education. In 1788 when William married another Dorothy, Dorothy Cowper, she moved in with the couple at the Forncett St Peter rectory, a parish in Norfolk. Dorothy lived happily with her uncle and his wife for 6 years. She helped in the household and with the children, but also began imagining how she would set up house with her brothers, especially William. It wasn’t until 1795, by which time Dorothy was in her early 20s, before she and William began living together, first at Racedown Lodge in Dorset and later in Dove Cottage at Grasmere in the Lake District from 1799 to 1808. External Website

Actors Jack Charles Jack Charles (1943-2022) was an Australian actor, musician, potter, and Aboriginal elder. A member of the Stolen Generation, Jack was removed from his mother as a baby, sexually abused in Box Hill, and rejected by his foster mother when he told her he had made contact with Aboriginal family members. As a consequence of his childhood suffering, Jack was a drug addict for decades, often financing his habit through petty theft. He's been imprisoned something like 22 times. His screen credits include the landmark Australian film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Bedevil (1993), Blackfellas (1993), Tom White (2004) and Pan (2015), among others. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Christian Bale unveils plans to build 12 foster homes in California Christian Bale 2024 “Imagine the absolute pain and the trauma of losing your parents or being torn from your parents, and then losing your brothers and sisters on top of that. That’s no way to treat kids. Christian Bale co-founder of Together California, the organisation steering the development, is constructing 12 foster homes with the goal of keeping siblings in the foster care system together, ensuring they reside under one roof. Also there will be two studio flats to help children transition into independent living, and a 7,000 sq ft community centre. Photograph: JC Olivera/Rex/Shutterstock External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Strange Myth of Romulus and Remus, The Founders of Rome History Defined The story of a couple of rejected boys (albeit they are demi-gods) founding the city of Rome dates back centuries. But, say the authors of this History Defined blog, archaeological evidence shows that around 200 years before Romulus and Remus are said to have set up the city (on 21st April 753 BCE), there were inhabitants along the shores of the River Tiber. The myth was appealing because the Romans could argue they were entitled to dominance since their first king (Romulus after he killed Remus) was the “son of the god of war”. That plus the boys being raised by a wolf fitted the Romans' idea of “themselves as strong, warlike people.” The blog includes reference to European artwork depicting Romulus and Remus from the 15th century up to and including the 1654 painting of French artist Nicholas Mignar. External Website

Authors D James and the Giant Peach ➝ Great Expectations (adapted) ➝ The BFG (book) ➝ Oliver Twist (adapted) ➝ Back to Top

Authors A All the Light We Cannot See ➝ Above Suspicion ➝ A Deadly American Marriage ➝ American Horror Story: Asylum ➝ They Do it with Mirrors (tv show) ➝ Alex Rider ➝ Archie ➝ Anne with an E ➝ A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV series) ➝ Alma's Not Normal ➝ Ashes to Ashes ➝ Agatha Christie's Marple ➝ A Discovery of Witches (TV show) ➝ A Fortunate Life (TV Mini-Series 1986) ➝ Australian Story: On the Brink - Bon Scott ➝ Anh Do's Brush with Fame ➝ Back to Top

Actors Alain Delon When Alain Delon (1935-2024) was 4 years of age, his parents divorced and abandoned him into foster care. Later, his parents shared custody of the boy who was put into multiple boarding schools (as he was regularly expelled). Alain Delon enlisted in the French army at the age of 17 (some sources say he did so voluntarily, some say his parents forced him to). In 1956 and back in Paris, the good looking Alain was 'discovered' by actor Brigitte Auber and through Auber, Alain met filmmakers and photographers. After his first film role he quickly became a success, a French star of the 1960s and 1970s. External Website

Poets Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (poet) Eliza Hamilton Dunlop Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880) was raised by her paternal grandmother in Ireland. She migrated to Australia with 2nd husband, Duncan Dunlop in 1838. By the time she was in her teens, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop was already a published poet. Her lament, “The Aboriginal Mother”—published in The Australian on 13 December 1838—was provoked by her outrage at the Myall Creek massacre. On 10 June 1838, around 28 (the total death toll was never established) Wirrayaraay people were slaughtered at Myall Creek Station in NSW. Seven men were publicly hanged for the massacre on 18 December 1838. Unsurprisingly, there was more anger at the execution of British citizens than there was at the slaughter of Wirrayaraay people. But Dunlop was astonished at the backlash against her and her poem. Although she continued to have her poetry published in colonial newspapers, her work was largely neglect after her death in 1880. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Whose Song to Sing Ben Wildsmith 2026 Whose Song to Sing? by Ben Wildsmith is a memoir-in-essays about adoption, identity, and belonging. Wildsmith traces his journey from childhood privilege through family breakdown, addiction, and despair, moving between Birmingham, South Wales, and abroad. As an adoptee, he wrestles with questions of culture, authenticity, and where he truly fits. Anchored by the music and stories of the Welsh Valleys—passed down by his adoptive grandfather—the book shows how identity can be shaped creatively through culture and community. Honest, ironic, and often comic, it ultimately presents belonging as something built rather than inherited. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience A Great Act of Love Heather Rose 2025 A Great Act of Love (2025) by Australian writer Heather Rose has 2 characters who are Care Experienced. The novel follows Caroline Colbert who settles in Van Dieman’s Land in 1839. Caroline’s father, Jacques-Louis, was born into the French nobility but lost both his parents & his land in the French Revolution. From the age of 10 he lives in kinship care in Edinburgh with a maternal aunt (& his older sister) & sets up as an apothecary in London when he’s adult. He’s transported to Norfolk Island’s penal settlement after killing a woman in London. The other Care Experienced character is the boy Caroline meets on the ship out to Van Dieman’s Land. Quill is around 10 years of age & has been given to the ship’s captain to pay off the debt. When the ship docks in Van Dieman’s Land, Caroline offers to care for Quill as her ward, ie, not as her servant. External Website

Performing Arts Australian Rock Singer Diana Anaid Australian singer, Diana Anaid (b. 1976), was in orphanages and foster care as a child. Diana Anaid is the performance name of Diana Gosper. Diana's mother died when she was one, and from then she lived a wandering gypsy life with her father, as well as in children's homes and foster. Diana finally settled down in Northern NSW when she was 15, taught herself to play guitar, and has made a living out of singing. External Website