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Autobiography/Memoir Heartlines: The Year I Met My Other Mother Susannah McFarlane & Robin Leuba 2016 Heartlines (2016) is an adoption story with a difference, the difference being that it is written by adoptee Susannah McFarlane and her birth mother Robin Leuba. In 1965, Robin travelled from Perth to Melbourne to give birth to her child. After 10 days, she returned to Perth and the baby, named Susannah, was adopted by a loving family. In 1989, Robin tried to contact Susannah. It takes until 2014, however, before Susannah is willing to correspond with Robin. Heartlines is the story of their reunion. External Website

Actors Samantha Morton Samantha Jane Morton (born 13 May 1977) is an English actress and director. She was in residential and foster care as a child and was a member of the Central Junior Television Workshop in her native Nottingham, and later began her career in British television in 1991. She guest-starred in Soldier Soldier and Cracker and had a bigger role in the ITV series Band of Gold. Samantha Morton has received numerous accolades for her work, including a British Academy Television Award, a British Independent Film Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a British Academy Film Award. She made the transition to film with lead roles in the dramas Emma (1996), Jane Eyre (1997). For her role in Longford, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Morton made her directorial debut with the television film The Unloved (2009), which won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Single Drama. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead 2020 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2020. The story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'. In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' The tension between Elwood's idealism and friend Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions. Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Holidays in hell: summer camp with Russia’s forgotten children The Guardian 2025 In this The Guardian article (25 February 2025) journalist Howard Amos talks about volunteering for a month during a summer camp at a state orphanage in Russia. The orphanage took in children with physical and mental disabilities and the summer camp provided games, stage shows and sporting activities. Amos volunteered for almost 10 years at the orphanage but says “it was the first visit that made the biggest impression”: “My closest reference point was probably workhouses or orphanages from a Charles Dickens novel. I vividly remember the smells – cooked food, unwashed bodies, chlorine and urine – and how the children crowded you, grabbing hands and clothes, pinching, pulling hair, jostling and asking questions…Children vulnerable to self-harm were tied up.” External Website

Non Fiction Roots: The eco-Journal Bernadette McBride 2018 Bernadette McBride was on the child protection register for over a decade and in and out of care on an often-weekly basis. Her mother was suffering from chronic alcohol addiction and some days Bernadette would simply be left waiting at the school gates. She is a writer, creative practitioner & social advocate. She is the author of Roots - a self help journal, and has had various short fiction published from a collection she is currently working on. Bernadette is a Manchester Fiction Prize 2020 finalist, and won the award for Biggest Impact on the City of Liverpool award in 2019. She a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. As a care-experienced writer she believes that often she is able to evoke subtle changes in internal and external environments on the page, and this is her superpower. External Website

Behind the Scenes Barry Jenkins Barry Jenkins (born November 19, 1979) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was born in 1979 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, the youngest of four siblings, each from a different father. His father separated from his mother while she was pregnant with Jenkins, believing that he was not Jenkins's father; he died when Jenkins was 12. Jenkins grew up in Liberty City and was primarily raised by another older woman (who had also looked after his mother while she was a teenager) in an overcrowded apartment. He attended Miami Northwestern Senior High School, where he played football and ran track. He made his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine. Following an eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking, Jenkins directed and co-wrote the LGBT-themed independent drama Moonlight (2016), which won numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. He became the fourth black person to be nominated for Best Director and the second black person to direct a Best Picture winner. He released his third directorial feature If Beale Street Could Talk, in 2018 to critical praise, and earned nominations for his screenplay at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes. External Website

Activists Founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society Angela Tucker 2022 In 2013, Angela Tucker located her biological parents. Using the film she had taken during the reunion, her husband Bryan Tucker created CLOSURE which streamed on Hulu in 2014, on Netflix from 2015 through to 2017 and on Amazon Prime from 2016 until 2021. After touring with CLOSURE in 2013, Angela began a video series called The Adopted Life Episodes in which teenage transracial adoptee talk about their experiences. She launched a podcast called The Adoptee Next Door and in 2022 founded the Adoptee Mentoring Society, a non-profit focuses on adoptees mentoring adoptees. In 2023, Tucker published You Should Be Grateful (2023) which centres on the experiences of adoptees, how they are often told they should be grateful, and how the insistence they be grateful can be silencing. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dickens Boy Thomas Keneally 2020 Thomas Keneally’s book, The Dickens Boy, is a fictionalised account of Edward Dickens (1852-1902), Charles Dickens’ youngest child. At 16 Edward was sent off by his father to Australia, to “apply himself”. When Edward, or Plorn as he was nicknamed by his father, arrives in Australia he has help from George Rusden, then clerk of the Victorian Parliament—who had earlier helped out Alfred Dickens (1845-1912) on his arrival in Australia—to get a position as a stockman with the Bonney brothers at Momba Station, NSW. Edward then narrates his story of the first 2 years in Australia, riding long distances to see his brother, organising local cricket matches, mustering sheep, learning about Aboriginal culture. Kenneally presents Plorn as a delightful young man; he’s resourceful, principled, and kind. Being so far from his parents, Edward feels orphaned. But he's not and his older brother, Alfred, has been in Australia for a couple of years. There are, however, 2 orphan characters who become friends with Edward: Tom Larkin and Maurice McArden. Tom Larkin’s convict mother died in childbirth and his father, also a convict, died only a few years later. Maurice McArden’s parents are artists who often leave their son with an uncle, Eustace Fremmel, while they’re off on jaunts through Europe. When the artists die, 13 year old Maurice stays on with Eustace, but is sent off to NSW at the age of 15 to live with another uncle, Amos Fremmel. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley et al. 2001 From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct audience, the oppressed American blacks, he brought hope and self-respect. This autobiography (written with Alex Haley) reveals his journey through the US foster care system, Malcolm's quick-witted integrity, usually obscured by batteries of frenzied headlines, and the fierce idealism which led him to reject both liberal hypocrisies and black racialism. External Website

Actors Brian Syron Brian Syron (19 November 1934 – 14 October 1993) was a human rights advocate, teacher, actor, writer, stage director and Australia's first Indigenous feature film director who has been recognised as the first First Nations feature film director. Brian Syron was born in Balmain, Sydney to Daniel Syron, a Biripi (also known as Birpai) man from New South Wales and Elizabeth Murray from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. During his childhood, Brian learned about his Aboriginal heritage by living with his paternal grandmother at Karuah, 184 km north of Sydney, for long chuncks of time. When he was fourteen, Brian ended up in the Grafton Correctional Centre. By the age of twenty-two, Brian had become a male model and began studying acting at the Ensemble Theatre Company in Sydney. Brian later co-founded a theatre company in Saratogo Springs in New York and did a number of tours throughout the country, including through the southern states where segregation prompted him to direct his attention to Aboriginal issues in Australia. Back in Australia, Brian Styron taught Aboriginal actors, including Denis Walker, Gary Foley, Jack Davis, Maureen Watson and Hyllus Maris. External Website

Films/Videos Lilo & Stitch 2021 Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 animated science fiction comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film's story revolves around two eccentric and mischievous individuals: a six-year-old Hawaiian girl named Lilo Pelekai, who is raised by her older, young adult-aged sister Nani after their parents died in a car accident, and a blue extraterrestrial animal-like creature called Experiment 626, who is adopted by Lilo as her "dog" and renamed "Stitch". Stitch, who is genetically engineered by his mad scientist creator to cause chaos and destruction, initially uses Lilo to avoid being captured by an intergalactic federation, but the two individuals develop a close bond through the Hawaiian concept of ʻohana, or extended family. This bond causes Stitch to reconsider and later defy his intended destructive purpose in order to keep his family together. External Website

Radio & Podcast From the Festivals — Lemn Sissay Lemn Sissay 2020 Celebrated British poet Lemn Sissay grew up not knowing his given name or his Ethiopian parents. His life was shaped by being adopted, and then raised in state care, as he talks about in this program. External Website

Performing Arts Singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon was born at Liverpool Maternity Hospital to Julia (née Stanley) (1914–1958) and Alfred Lennon (1912–1976). He was in kinship care with his aunt for most of his childhood. His father was often away from home. When he eventually came home, he offered to look after the family, but Julia, by then pregnant with another man's child, rejected the idea. After her sister Mimi complained to Liverpool's Social Services twice, Julia gave her custody of Lennon. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited her and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them – with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins – and after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. In one account of this incident, Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. Lennon had no further contact with Alf for close to 20 years. Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton, with Mimi and her husband George Toogood Smith, who had no children of their own. His aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and John often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, and showed him how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino. On 15 July 1958, she was knocked down and killed by a car driven by an off-duty policeman, close to her sister's house at 251 Menlove Avenue. Lennon was traumatised by her death and wrote several songs about her, including "Julia" and "Mother". His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono's collaborator. Starting with 1967's "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture. In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Poppy Shakespeare Clare Allan 2006 Poppy Shakespeare is a 2006 novel by Clare Allan, later adapted into a 2008 Channel 4 film. Set in North London's fictional Dorothy Fish Day Hospital, the story follows two women: "N," a long-term patient who fears discharge, and Poppy Shakespeare, a new arrival adamant she's not mentally ill. Following her mother's suicide, N has been in and out of care most of her life, from foster care, through 'children looked after' services to mental health inpatient and outpatient services. Resolutely determined to remain an outpatient at a mental health day centre, her day-to-day existence is challenged by a new patient, Poppy Shakespeare... whilst all other outpatients are hell-bent on avoiding discharge, Poppy wants nothing else. External Website

Non Fiction History and Sociology of the Willowbrook State School William Bronston 2013 Willowbrook State School was used to warehouse as many as 6000 children and adults with intellectual disabilities between 1947 and when it was closed in 1987. In 1972 a journalist exposed the appalling practices within the 'school'. In this book the authors tell the story of what was happening at Willowbrook prior to the 1972 expose, and include a history of the treatment of people with disabilities in the United States. External Website

Activists Founder of the oldest black orphanage in the United States. Carrie Steele Logan 1892 Carrie Steele Logan, born into slavery and orphaned as a child, worked as a maid at Union Station in Atlanta. Moved by the plight of abandoned children she encountered, she began caring for them in her small home. Realizing she needed more space, Steele wrote and sold her autobiography to raise funds. In 1888, she secured a charter for the Carrie Steele Orphans' Home and eventually raised enough money to build a three-story brick orphanage, which was dedicated in 1892. founder of the oldest black orphanage in the United States. It became the oldest Black orphanage in the United States, funded entirely through her efforts. Her epitaph reads, “The mother of orphans". Logan was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 1998. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles John Brownlow's story John Brownlow 2021 In this blog, you can read the story of John, who was a pupil at the Foundling Hospital, England’s first dedicated children’s charity, in the 19th Century. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Li Cunxin Li Cunxin 2003 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

Films/Videos My Father's Violin 2022 My Father's Violin is the story of 8 year old Turkish girl, Ozlem, who goes to live with her father's brother, Mehmet, when her father dies. Mehmet is an acclaimed violinist, a perfectionist and hard man who doesn't have much time for a small child. However, his relationship with Ozlem changes all that. External Website

Radio & Podcast Kiri Te Kanawa (Podcast) This Cultural Life 2024 In this podcast, opera singer Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa (b. 1944) speaks about her amazing life with John Wilson. Included in the conversation is her experience having been adopted and the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation she established in retirement to encourage talented young New Zealand musicians & singers. External Website