Autobiography/Memoir Nine Clouds Amanda Gargula 2010 Amanda tells the story of her time in the Moralta Childrens Home, in a cottage home and on her own after she left state care. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman 2017 Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. A mystery surrounds her past and the reader learns that she spent time in care. Everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. External Website

Authors G Sean Geoghegan ➝ Peter Gronlund ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Re-homing': America's shocking trade in unwanted children 2018 A disturbing story about the unregulated practice in the United States of 're-homing' children who have been adopted. Events are held where children get to parade before prospective parents, and some get taken on 'probation'. Events are held where children get to parade before prospective parents, and some get taken on 'probation'. 0 years in prison for their crimes against children. External Website

Films/Videos Ladybird, Ladybird 1994 Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) is a British film directed by Ken Loach. Set in 1987, the film tells the story of Maggie Conlan (Crissy Rock) who has had 6 children removed by Social Sciences and is trying to get the children back. We learn that Maggie was in a violent relationship and escapes into a women’s refuge with 4 children. She locks them in her room when she goes out when night. There’s a fire. One child is badly injured and given to foster parents. Maggie returns to the abusive man and her other 3 children are taken into the care system. Maggie has 2 more children with Jorge (Vladimir Vega) who is a refugee from Central American. Both children are removed by state authorities Yet the authorities allow Maggie and Jorge to keep 3 more children. According to Loach, the film is based on a true story. External Website

Actors Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin to businessman and inventor, Richard (Dick) Welles, and pianist, Beatrice Ives Welles. When he was six, Orson’s parents separated. Three years later, his mother died of hepatitis. At age 11, Orson was sent to boarding school and after his father died, the principal of the school became 15 year old Orson's guardian. Orson Welles is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. While in his twenties Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway. In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic because many listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring. His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which is consistently ranked as the greatest film ever made, and which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. In 2002 Orson Welles was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and in 2018 he was included in the list of the 50 greatest Hollywood actors of all time by The Daily Telegraph. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles How 10 Orphans From eSwatini Helped Write A Prize-Winning Movie Rachel Cohen 2018 A discussion about the making of a film which includes actual orphans talking about their own experiences in the New Life Homes orphanage in eSwatini. External Website

Authors W British Javelin Thrower ➝ May Wirth ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Us to You 2021 Us to You is a spoken word performance from Care Experienced People to the non-care experienced. The message is Stop It - stop assumptions, stop the bad rap, stop using us, stop speaking over us. External Website

Non Fiction Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story Mary Cardaras 2021 Mary Cardaras wrote Ripped from the Root (2021) after listening to the story of Dena Polites Poulias who had been adopted from Greece by an American couple in the 1950s. Just as Mary had been. Mary had given up her 10 year search for her biological Greek mother by then, but, inspired by the shared experienced with Dena, began talking with the journalist Gabrielle Glaser who had written American Baby, and with the scholar Gonda Van Steen, who had been exploring the context of Greek adoptions since 2013. In Ripped from the Root, Mary recounts how Dena went back to the village where she was born many years later. How the adoption - and reclamation - affected others such as extended family is covered, and has relevance for other transnational adoptees. External Website

Children's Fiction The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1835-1910) is set in the 1840s in the small town of St. Petersburg, Missouri (based on Hannibal in Missouri where Mark Twain lived as a child). Tom Sawyer is an orphan who lives with his Aunt Polly and brother Sid. Tom is an entrepreneurial character, often persuading other boys to pay him for doing his work, eg, painting the front fence. Tom’s many adventures include running away from home with his friends Joe Harper & Huckleberry Finn and returning in time to attend his own funeral. There was controversy in 2011 when a new edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) removed offensive racist words. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Foster Child: Jenny Blackhurst 2017 When child psychologist Imogen Reid takes on the case of 11-year-old Ellie Atkinson, she refuses to listen to warnings that the girl is dangerous. Ellie was the only survivor of a fire that killed her family. Imogen is convinced she's just a sad and angry child struggling to cope with her loss. But Ellie's foster parents and teachers are starting to fear her. When she gets upset, bad things seem to happen. And as Imogen gets closer to Ellie, she may be putting herself in danger... External Website

Academic Articles No More Standing In The Shadows – Treating The Wounds Of Historic Forced Adoption Jeannot Farmer 2023 Jeannot Farmer was a Churchill Fellow in 2023 and compiled her report: No More Standing In The Shadows – Treating The Wounds Of Historic Forced Adoption. Themes include: Governance and Public Provision; Children in Care. During the Churchill application process, apologies were made by the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments, and the balance of Jeannot's project moved more towards subsequent measures, rather than the acquiring of apologies. External Website

Television Shows Joe Swash: Teens in Care 2023 BBC1 documentary follows Joe Swash as he explores stories of teens 16+ in care. His motivation is personal, as his mum, Kiffy, has been a foster carer for over 15 years. Joe wants to spend time with teens across the UK who live in foster care, in residential children’s homes, and some who left at 18 and are trying to make it alone, to show what growing up as a teenager in care is really like. His journey follows the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which promised a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the children’s social care system’. Through this experience, Joe also sees at first hand the work of foster carers and frontline workers dedicated to helping teens in care, as he seeks to find out how some of the issues they encounter in the care system might be tackled better. External Website

Authors H Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (poet) ➝ Robert Hayden ➝ Langston Hughes (poet) ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Code of Silence 2026 Code of Silence (2025) is a British crime series about a deaf woman who helps police with her lip reading skills. Set in Canterbury, England, Alison Woods (Roe Ayling-Ellis) works in a police canteen when she is approached to assist detectives in a criminal investigation. The police are using covert surveillance to observe a criminal gang they suspect are planning a jewellery heist. Recruited by the gang is Liam Barlow (Kieron Moore), a computer hacker, whose part in the heist is to bypass security systems. Liam Barlow, we find out, was in foster care & is motivated to help the gang because he intends to double cross them - 2 gang members were responsible for the death of his foster father. External Website

Films/Videos Walkabout 1971 Walkabout (1971) is an Australian adventure film that tells the story of 2 white children who are abandoned in the Australian Outback and who are helped to survive by an Aboriginal teenager. Girl (Jenny Agutter) and her young brother White Boy (Luc Roeg) live in Sydney with their parents. One day their father drives them into the Outback on the pretence of having a picnic. Their father pulls a gun and fires at the children. After the children flee, the father sets the car on fire and shoots himself. By the middle of the next day, the children are weak from walking and lack of food. After they are discovered by an Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil), the 3 travel together with Black Bloy sharing kangaroo meat and teaching the white children how to find water. The white children survive. Black Boy doesn’t. External Website

Artists John Callahan (artist) John Callahan (1951-2010) was an American cartoonist based in Portland, Oregon. He was adopted as a baby and grew up with 5 other siblings, all of whom were the biological children of his adoptive parents. According to some sources, he was sexually abused by a nun at this Catholic school when he was 8 and he began drinking alcohol at the age of 12. After the car accident which paralysed him from the waist down when he was only 21, Callahan in 1978 entered a 12 step program to stop drinking and, after extensive physical therapy, took up drawing cartoons. He went on to become an internationally syndicated cartoonist in magazines and newspapers, achieved an undergraduate degree in English from Portland State University and was enrolled in a Master's program in counselling at the time of his death. External Website

Actors Ingrid Bergman Ingrid Bergman (29 August 1915 – 29 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays. She was in kinship care as a teenager. Ingrid was only 3 years old when her mother died. Justus raised his daughter for the next 9 years with the help of his sister Ellen—whom Ingrid called Mama—and, being a photographer—he also owned and ran a camera shop—took many photos and home movies of his daughter. “During her childhood” writes David Smith, “Bergman may have been the most photographed person in Sweden.” Ingrid was 12 when her father died of stomach cancer. When her father died, Ingrid was left in the care of Aunt Ellen for a few months, until her aunt’s death 9 months later. The teenager then went to live with an uncle. She won many accolades, including three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, four Golden Globe Awards, and a BAFTA Award. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Bergman as the fourth-greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema. External Website

Television Shows My Mum Tracy Beaker 2021 My Mum Tracy Beaker is a British children's television miniseries that premiered on CBBC and BBC iPlayer on 12 February 2021. The series follows on from the events of its predecessors, The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy Beaker Returns and The Dumping Ground. My Mum Tracy Beaker saw Dani Harmer reprise her role as Tracy Beaker, and also included original cast members Lisa Coleman, Ruth Gemmell and Montanna Thompson, as well as new cast members Emma Davies and Jordan Duvigneau. External Website