Search Results

Academic Articles A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults Jim Goddard 2008 A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults. Jim Goddard, Julia Feast & Derek Kirton: For people who have spent part or all of their childhoods in care, access to information about family history and events that have happened during their childhood can offer significant benefits. It can provide a chronological history, explain the reasons for coming into care and help to build a fuller sense of the enquirer’s current identity. While the principle of providing such information has long been recognised, those formerly in care have faced numerous challenges in gaining access to their records. If you can't get access to this article, email: careexpereinceandculture@gmail.com and we'll pass on your request to Jim Goddard, Chair of The Care Leavers' Association. External Website

Authors C Comedian, writer, tv presenter ➝ Guitarist, singer, songwriter ➝ Australian, singer, entertainer ➝ Singer, songwriter, pianist, composer ➝ Puppeteer ➝ Chinese Australian ballet dancer ➝ Radio Presenter ➝ Singer, songwriter, American ➝ Back to Top

Performing Arts Pauline Black Pauline Black Pauline Black was born Belinda Magnus on 23 October 1953 in Romford, Essex, to an Anglo-Jewish teenage mother and a Nigerian father, Gordon Adenle, a Yoruba prince who had come to London to study engineering. She was adopted by a white, middle-aged couple and given the name Pauline Vickers. Black was not aware of her Jewish heritage until she was 42 when she traced her birth mother. She has spoken about her experiences growing up as a Black child in a white adoptive family, including the challenges of racial identity and belonging. Her autobiography, Black by Design: A 2-Tone Memoir (2012), explores her adoption, racial identity, and journey to reconnect with her roots. External Website

Television Shows Three Days of Christmas 2019 Three Days of Christmas (2019) is a Spanish limited series set about 10 years after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). 3 girls grow up in a sheltered home but they take in a 15-year old whose life is in danger and become 4 sisters. Over time conflicts develop and the foster sister rejects her foster family. External Website

Performing Arts Chinese Australian ballet dancer Li Cunxin Li Cunxin was taken from his family in rural China at the age of 11. For 7 years he lived away from his family in Beijing and trained for 16 hours a day at a dance academy. As a young man, he was offered an opportunity as an exchange student and performed for the Houston Ballet in Texas, United States and decided not to return to China. In 1995, Li Cunxin moved with his Australian born wife, Mary McKendry, to Australia and was the principal ballet dancer for the Australian Ballet. External Website

Authors N The Orphans ➝ The Silent Stars Go By ➝ Frankie ➝ The Kingdom ➝ The December Boys ➝ Macbeth ➝ Little Wing ➝ Back to Top

Academic Books & Book Chapters Relinquished Gretchen Sisson 2024 Dr Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist whose qualitative research interests focus on abortion and adoption in the United States. Her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood draws from interviews she has conducted with women who have relinquished their babies to adoption. From the publisher’s site: “Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace External Website

Authors G Carol Grace ➝ Cary Grant ➝ Back to Top

Authors B Floella Benjamin (writer) ➝ Shannon Burns ➝ Anthony Burgess ➝ Leslie Baruch Brent ➝ Andi Brierley ➝ Sally Bayley ➝ Rita Mae Brown ➝ Leigh Bardugo ➝ Elizabeth Bowen ➝ Louise Beech ➝ Annie Besant ➝ Martin Buber ➝ Augusten Burroughs ➝ Nina Bawden ➝ J.M. Barrie ➝ Back to Top

Authors P Hegel's Owl. The Life of Bernard Smith ➝ Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Superkids: Breaking Away from Care 2018 Lemn Sissay meets seven young people who are in the care of their council and sets out to help them express their experiences through words and perform them to a packed theatre of decision-makers. External Website

Authors Q Vivaldi's Virgins ➝ Back to Top

Authors O One Another (Podcast) ➝ BBC Radio 4 - Books and Authors, Joyce Carol Oates, Wind in the Willows and Orphans in literature ➝ How Superman Defeated the KKK (in Real Life): Hear the World Changing 1946 Radio Drama ➝ The Horror Writer: Edgar Allan Poe ➝ Why my birth parents tried to keep me a secret ➝ Back to Top

Children's Fiction Homecoming: Volume 1 Cynthia Voight 2012 “It’s still true.” That’s the first thing James Tillerman says to his older sister, Dicey, every morning. It’s still true that their mother has abandoned the four Tillermans in a mall parking lot somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. It’s still true that they have to find their own way to Great-aunt Cilla’s house in Bridgeport. It’s still true that they need to spend as little as possible on food and seek shelter anywhere that is out of view of the authorities. It’s still true that the only way they can hope to all stay together is to just keep moving forward. Deep down, Dicey hopes they can find someone to trust, someone who will take them in and love them. But she’s afraid it’s just too much to hope for.... Originally published 1973 External Website

Television Shows Goliath 2016 Legal drama series. Main character is lawyer Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton). His new 2IC is Patty Solis-Papagian (Nina Arianda), who was in foster care. She is a lawyer and a real estate agent. There are other Care Experienced characters in the series, all playing the roles of villians. In the 4th season of legal drama, Patty Solis-Pagian is now a swanky corporate lawyer. There's a kinship care character too. Kate Zax (Clara Wong) is the niece of George Zax and was in his care from a young age. She's a chemist at Zax Pharma and concerned about the addictive properties of the drug the corporation promotes as non-addictive. External Website

Poets Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley African American poet, Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), was trafficked on a slave ship called The Phillis from West Africa when she was about 7 years of age She was “purchased” in August 1761 by Susanna Wheatley, the wife of a successful Boston, Massachusetts tailor, John Wheatley. Phillis worked as a domestic for the Wheatleys, but they also taught her to read and write. By the time she was 18, Phillis Wheatley had a collection of poems which were, eventually, published as Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). She was the first African American woman to have a book published. The poem for which Phillis Wheatley is best known today is “On Being Brought from Africa to America (1768). A statue of Phillis Wheatley forms part of the Boston Women’s Memorial on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Image from here: https://friendsofthepublicgarden.org/2023/03/01/womenshistory-phillis-wheatley-march-1-2023/ External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People The Mystery of Charles Dickens A.N.Wilson 2020 In this pychological analysis of the great Victorian writer, A.N.Wilson explores how Charles Dickens drew on his own experiences as a child to create his popular novels. Wilson uses the idea of the 'false self' to suggest that Dickens protected his inner child from public scrutiny yet told the story of his childhood through his books. External Website

Authors O Ordeal by Innocence (Novel) ➝ I was born for this ➝ Girl ➝ Where the Crawdads Sing (novel) ➝ Evidence of V ➝ Back to Top

Authors G Delinquent Angel ➝ Daddy, we hardly knew you ➝ One Life: My Mother's Story ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Orphan 2009 Orphan is a 2009 psychological horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by David Leslie Johnson from a story by Alex Mace. The film stars Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, C. C. H. Pounder and Jimmy Bennett. The plot centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious nine-year-old Russian orphan. External Website