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Radio & Podcast Why my birth parents tried to keep me a secret BBC Outlook "How could a nun be my mother? It didn't make any sense at all." For Brendan Watkins - who was told at the age of 8 that he was adopted - finding out his mother was a nun answered some questions, but raised a whole lot more. Brendan tells the story of his detective work which led to discovering he is a Child of Priests in this episode of the BBC's Outlook program. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Author of ‘Hackney Child’ on absent parents, care homes, and Mother’s Day Cachella Smith 2021 Cachella Smith interviews author of 'Hackney Child' Jenny Molloy (Hope Daniels) about growing up in the care system, childhood and Mother's Day. External Website

Films/Videos Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story 2009 Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009) is a biopic of African American neurosurgeon, Ben Carson (b. 1951). The movie was adapted from an autobiography written by Ben Carson with Cecil Murphey and published in 1990. Gifted Hands begins in 1987 when Dr Ben Carson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) travels to German to meet a couple whose twins are conjoined at the back of their heads. The film then goes back to 1961 and we find out that 11-year-old Ben (Gus Hoffman) and his older brother Curtis (Tajh Bellow) are living with their single mother, Sonya (Kimberly Elise), in a mostly white neighbourhood and the boys are not doing well at school. We also find out that Sonya was in the foster care system until she was 13, which is when she married the boys’ father. Sonya, who is illiterate but doesn’t want that for her sons or for them to even know she is illiterate, devises ways to encourage the boys to read. It’s not long before Ben, who was failing, is top of his class. For a period, Ben and Curtis are looked after by a member of Sonya’s church community as she is institutionalised because she is suffering from depression. External Website

Performing Arts Singer, dancer, actress, activist Lena Horne Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn an American singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne was raised mainly by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr. (1893–1970), left the family when she was 3 years old and moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1894–1976), was the granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron. She was an actress with a black theater troupe and travelled extensively. Horne's career spanned over 70 years, appearing in film, television, and theater. She belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated black people. External Website

Radio & Podcast Discovering you are not who you thought you were ABC God Forbid What happens when you find out new knowledge about yourself via DNA and other means? This is the question posed to 2 adoptees in this podcast, Vietnamese born and Australian raised Lynelle Long and Marlene Sciclune, whose heritage is Australian First Nations and Maltese. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots Deborah Feldman 2012 Now a Netflix original series! Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman's growing up in kinship care as a member of an ultra orthodox Jewish group. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. External Website

Activists The First Care Experienced Activist? Hannah Brown 2024 Hannah Brown (1866-1973) was baptized Hannah Sherman at the foundling hospital in 1866. Hannah later wrote The Child She Bare, an account of her childhood experiences which she published anonymously as a foundling.Hannah Brown was brought to the Foundling Hospital in 1866. She wrote an account of her childhood experiences which was published anonymously The Child She Bare, A Foundling (London, Headley, 1919). She is quite negative about her time in the Foundling Hospital. And for when it was written many of her observations are spot on. She writes about the stigma and how ‘children’s happiness and future welfare is sacrificed, even to the extent of their mother’s name, nationality – thrown in the world without a relative or friend to confide in…and have no right to the stigma attached to them.’ External Website

Artists Jade Green “My Twelve Houses and One Home” in the “Finding Home” digital exhibition. 🏡 The exhibition explores what home means. I painted this to depict the many moves, instability and my experiences of “home” in foster care. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Woman in the Window A J Finn 2019 What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock and features an adopted teenage boy. External Website

Radio & Podcast Philip Pullman (BBC) World Book Club 2005 In this podcast talks about his His Dark Materials fantasy triology which features Care Experienced character, Lyra Bbelacqua. He stresses the importances of having helpful characters in children's stories so that children - no matter their circumstances - know there are good people in the world. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Hitler's Forgotten Children Ingrid Von Oelhafen & Tim Tate 2015 Hitler’s Forgotten Children (2015) by Ingrid Von Oelhafen & Tim Tate tells the story of a child born in Slovenia but stolen from her parents by Nazi occupiers. Erika was one of many children stolen by Nazis and sent to live with a German couple. She was renamed Ingrid. After the war, Erika/Ingrid began to uncover the story of her birth and fostering as she also learned about the full scale of what is known as the Lebensborn Program. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Orphan X (novel series) Gregg Hurwitz 2016 Orphan X (2016) is a thriller written by American novelist Gregg Hurwitz. It is the first in a series of books centred around Evan Smoak. At the age of 12, Evan was enrolled in a secret operation to train orphans as assassins for government agencies. Evan or Orphan X maintains access to the program’s funding and weapons after the secret operation is closed and he becomes a vigilante assassin. Other books in the series are Buy a Bullet (2016), The Nowhere Man (2017), Hellbent (2018), Out in the Dark (2019), Into The Fire (2020) and The Prodigal Son (2021). External Website

Television Shows Harrow 2018 Harrow is an Australian television drama series that stars Ioan Gruffudd as Dr. Daniel Harrow. Series 1, Episode 4 has a story where a homeless woman who 'kidnaps' a baby is not believed when she insists the unregistered baby is hers. Series 2, Episode 7 has a woman who was in foster care as a successful alternative medicine advocate and murder victim. External Website

Non Fiction Twelve Mighty Orphans (book) Jim Dent 2008 In this book, Jim Dent tells the story of a group of orphans who became a championship football team. Masonic Home was an orphanage for housing and educating the orphans of Texas Freemasons. When Rusty Russell—himself an orphan—arrived at the school in 1929, the orphanage did not have a football team. Yet, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Masonic Home Mighty Mites was the toughest football team in Texas. They might have been the scrawniest kids with not much, but with Rusty Russell coaching them, the Mighty Mites beat the kids from ‘good’ schools wearing expensive uniforms. External Website

Writers AUTHORS X External Website

Autobiography/Memoir It Is No Secret Donna Meehan 2000 At the age of five, Donna was taken away from her family and sent to a foster family in Newcastle, New South Wales. In this book, Donna reflects back on her childhood memories of becoming an only child in a white family. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Child She Bare Hannah Brown 1919 Hannah Brown was brought to the Foundling Hospital in 1866. She wrote an account of her childhood experiences which was published anonymously The Child She Bare, A Foundling (London, Headley, 1919). She is quite negative about her time in the Foundling. And for when it was written many of her observations are spot on. She writes about the stigma and how ‘children’s happiness and future welfare is sacrificed, even to the extent of their mother’s name, nationality – thrown in the world without a relative or friend to confide in…and have no right to the stigma attached to them.’ External Website

Writers Walter Scott 1771-1832 Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian. Walter Scott was born to a solicitor and the daughter of a doctor in Edinburgh in 1771. At 18 months, Walter contracted infantile paralysis (or polio) and was lame for the rest of his life. Because of his ill health, the boy was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at Sandknowe Farm, in the hope that being out of the city would improve his health. He stayed there until he began school. Scott is respected for his lively historical romances and the other genres he inaugurated, for example, the ‘nautical novel’. He died in 1832 External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shadow in the Empire of Light Jane Routley 2021 Shine's life is usually dull: an orphan without magic in a family of powerful mages, she's left to run the family estate with only an eccentric aunt and telepathic cat for company. But when the family descend on the house for the annual Fertility Festival, Shine is plunged into dark intrigue; stolen letters, a fugitive spy, and family drama mix with murder, sex and secrets, and Shine is forced to decide both her loyalties and future... External Website

Television Shows The Lost Children 2006 With Hudson Mills, Beatrice Joblin, Rhys Castle-Hughes, Mikaela Devitt. Ethan and his sister Amy are travelling by ship from England with their mother Charlotte, to join their father, who has gone ahead of them to establish the family farm. A storm hits, their vessel begins to take on water, and the captain issues the order to abandon ship. External Website