Authors G Guilty feminist Deborah Frances-White ➝ Is adoption ethical ➝ Back to Top

Authors P Sancho: An Act of Rememberance ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Offla's Children: A Family Memoir Helena Ban Wilson et al. 2020 This is the poignant story of Zoltan Ban, a post-war Hungarian refugee living with mental illness, who desperately struggled to keep his young children after Jean, his English-born wife, died of breast cancer in 1963.Offla, as his children affectionately called him, was a highly intelligent, resourceful and eccentric man who demonstrated extraordinary determination to maintain the bond with his children while they grew up in State care in a church-run children’s home in Queensland. This memoir by Offla’s children, Paul, Helena and Liz, expresses strong emotion leavened with humour. They invite us to see through each of their eyes how their different inner worlds unfolded within the outer world of institutional life and against the historical backdrop of events such as Billy Graham’s crusade, the Cold War and man landing on the moon. External Website

Authors S John Sutherland ➝ Kate Shayler ➝ Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati ➝ Keith Saha ➝ Sharon Saltzberg ➝ Gertrude Stein ➝ Oliver Sacks ➝ George Sand ➝ Lemn Sissay ➝ Bernard Smith (art historian) ➝ Barbara Sumner (Writer) ➝ Gene Siskel ➝ Stephanie Shirley ➝ Saki ➝ Walter Scott ➝ Soren Sveistrup ➝ Charles Ignatius Sancho ➝ Back to Top

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

Authors G Musician, music producer, DJ, visual artist and actor. ➝ TV Presenter ➝ Rapper, songwriter ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Tracy Beaker Returns 2021 Tracy Beaker Returns is a British television programme. Based upon the novels by Jacqueline Wilson, it is the sequel series to The Story of Tracy Beaker, a girl in state care. The series stars Dani Harmer as protagonist Tracy Beaker. The third and final series ended on 23 March 2012. A spin-off entitled The Dumping Ground started airing on 4 January 2013. External Website

Activists Civil rights, social justice, and the empowerment of disenfranchised communities Maya Angelou 1928-2014 Maya Angelou, renowned poet and author, had a difficult childhood, spending part of her youth in foster care, kinship care and experiencing trauma from abuse. Her experiences shaped her advocacy for marginalized communities. Maya used her platform to fight for civil rights, social justice, and the empowerment of disenfranchised communities, including youth who have experienced trauma and abuse. Her work, particularly her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, has been a source of inspiration for those in care systems worldwide. Image source: Clinton Library via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) External Website

Television Shows The Last Anniversary (tv series) 2025 The Last Anniversary (2025) is an Australian family drama series adapted from the eponymous novel by Liane Moriarty. Set on the fictitious Scribbly Gum Island, close to Sydney, journalist Sophie (Teresa Palmer) inherits a property from the now-deceased Connie (Angela Punch McGregor), one of 2 sisters who raised a child ostensibly not their own but abandoned by a couple decades ago. Connie & Rose – and their families – have been making a living out of telling the story of “Baby Munro”, abandoned by their parents who mysteriously disappeared; Scribbly Gum Island is now a tourist attraction. The truth revealed at the end of the series is that *spoiler alert* the baby, named Enigma, is the child of one of the sisters. External Website

Actors Paul Barber Patrick Barber, known by the stage name Paul Barber (born 18 March 1951), is an English actor from Liverpool. Barber's mother died from tuberculosis when he was 7. He was then taken into care. His mother was from Middlesbrough. His father, originally from Sierra Leone, died when Paul (or Paddy as he was then known) and his brothers Brian, Paul, Mike and sisters Claudette and Lorraine were very young. Whilst he was in care, he was abused both physically and mentally. He notes that he has suffered like others, but channeled his emotions into acting. In a career spanning more than 45 years, he is best known for playing Denzil in Only Fools and Horses and Horse in The Full Monty. External Website

Poets William Wordsworth William Wordsworth Major English poet, William Wordsworth (1770-1850), was in foster and kinship care as a child. William Wordsworth was born to lawyer John Wordsworth (1741-83) and Ann Cookson (1747-1778). William was the 2nd of 5 children. Ann died in 1778, when William was almost 8. On her death, John Wordsworth split up his family. 6 year old Dorothy went into kinship care with a great aunt in Halifax, 65 miles away; she didn’t see her brothers for 9 years after that. The two younger boys, John and Christopher, under 3, went to live with maternal grandparents in Penrith. John Wordsworth took William and his eldest boy, Richard, to live with him. After 14 months of living with their father, Richard and William were sent to school, Hawkshead, 30 miles from home. The boys, and later their brothers, John and Christopher, were “boarded out” or fostered to the Tyson family. For 4 years, there were only occasional visits back home with their father. Then, in 1783, Johns Wordsworth died. The boys remained with the Tyson’s during term time, but during holidays, they stayed either with their maternal grandparents in Penrith or with one of their 2 uncles, Christopher or Richard. 17-year-old William Wordsworth went to Cambridge in 1787, funded by grants and scholarships from the university. During his first 2 holidays, he returned home to Ann Tyson. William Wordsworth had been writing poetry since he was in school. He published his first collection of poems in 1793 at the age of 23. External Website

Authors E Fairyland ➝ Careful, He Might Hear You (novel) ➝ Eden's lost ➝ Water under the bridge ➝ Back to Top

Children's Fiction The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 1974 At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in British India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and made an effort to ignore the girl. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoiled, demanding, and self-centered. After a cholera epidemic kills Mary's parents, the few surviving servants flee the house without Mary. Mary is sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. Both love no one because they have never been loved. Mary finds a secret garden and with Colin and the help of the gardener they bring it back to its former glory. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Foster Care and Me Judith Denton 2019 In this memoir, Judith Denton talks about her experiences in the foster care system including exclusions from school and conflict with the legal system, to later going to university and working in the corporate world. Judith Denton is Founder and CEO of The Transformed You, a support and mentorship program for children and young people in care, and Care Leavers. External Website

Artists Goldie (artist) Clifford Joseph Price (MBE), better known as Goldie, is a British musician, music producer, DJ, visual artist and actor. He was b.1965 and put up for adoption at the age of 3. He spent time in various children's homes and with several different foster parents. He was sexually and physically abused during this period. His first move into the arts was as a breakdancer but then he gained exposure for his work as a graffiti artist. Goldie became well known for his pioneering role as a musician in the 1990’s. In 2007, he returned to the art world with an art exhibition, Love Over Gold, which was held at the Leonard Street Gallery, London. External Website

Actors Chad Coleman Chad L. Coleman (born September 6, 1974) is an American actor. He grew up in foster care and became known by portraying Dennis "Cutty" Wise on the HBO crime drama series The Wire (2004–2008), voicing Coach in the video game Left 4 Dead 2, and portraying Tyreese Williams on the AMC post-apocalyptic horror series The Walking Dead (2012–2015). He currently stars in the science fiction series The Expanse as Fred Johnson, a.k.a. "the Butcher of Anderson Station", and starred in the History Channel's 2016 re-imagining of the miniseries Roots. He currently plays a recurring role as the alien Klyden, on the Fox series The Orville. External Website

Authors D Death in Holy Orders ➝ Dexter: Original Sin ➝ Dexter ➝ Dickensian ➝ Decline and Fall ➝ Dalgliesh ➝ Died in the Wool (TV Show) ➝ Dublin Murders ➝ Down Cemetry Road ➝ Dark ➝ Dear Child ➝ Dark Winds ➝ Dark Heart ➝ Dogs of Berlin ➝ Diff'rent Strokes ➝ Devil in Ohio ➝ Dickinson ➝ Back to Top

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Lola in the Mirror Trent Dalton 2023 Lola in the Mirror (2023) by popular Australian writer Trent Dalton has 2 Care Experienced characters. First, the protagonist of Lola in the Mirror is a teenage girl who finds out early in the novel that her mother—who has just died—isn’t her mother. It’s not until the final pages that we learn what happened when the protagonist was a baby and why she and Erica Finlay have been on the run ever since. Second, the protagonist’s best friend is a 19-year-old homeless Aboriginal Australian, Charlie Mould. Charlie spent his childhood bouncing from foster family to foster family until he’d had enough and ran away. External Website

Authors L George Lopez ➝ Ray Liotta ➝ Simu Liu ➝ Back to Top

Writers Jack London 1876-1916 John Griffith London (1876 – 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. John was in foster care as a baby because his single mother was too sick to care for him. The length of time is not clear - it was anywhere between 8 months & 2 years. Jack remained in contact with his foster mother, former slave Jenny Prentice, for the rest of his life. Jack left school at the mandatory leaving age of thirteen and did a range of precarious working class jobs until he decided he'd had enough and would become a writer. He went back to school at nineteen, and to university - briefly - the following year. His first collection of short stories was published when Jack was only twenty-four. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, Jack London was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. External Website