Authors H The Fictional Onscreen Depiction of Looked-after Young People: "Finding someone just like me." ➝ What’s the story? Sociological explorations of the life course narratives of adults with care experience ➝ Back to Top

Writers Philip Doddridge Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) Philip Doddridge was a Congregationalist minister, writer and hymn writer. He was born in London, the youngest of 20 children. His mother died when he was 8 and his father when he was 12. His first guardian wasted the boy's inheritance, his 2nd one became a lifelong friend. Doddridge wrote a number of books and hymns. Some ot the hymns are still in use today. External Website

Films/Videos A Mother Finds Her Lost Child After a 40-year search 2021 This is the moving story of Nanncy Davis Womac whose daughter finally found her 40 years after mom and baby were forcibly separated and the baby adopted. There's a larger story in the video of an evangelical pastor setting up homes for 'troubled' teenagers. Lester Roloff (1914-1982) is written of positively in Wikipedia, but there were complaints from some that he was running a 'private prison', brainwashing and brutalising girls. In 1973 Roloff signed an agreement with the State of Texas that he would stop handcuffing girls - which he did to prevent them running away. External Website

Radio & Podcast The green suitcase and the secret family Conversations 2022 Betty O'Neil grew up during the 1950s in country NSW with her single mother, Nora. Because Nora worked in hotels, in life-in positions - Betty was often in foster care with local families. Betty didn't know her father as a child; he'd deserted Nora before Betty was born. Decades later Nora travels to Lublin in Poland to found out about him and his role in the Polish resistance. External Website

Authors D I've been bloody lucky: the story of an orphan named Jimmy Butt ➝ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ➝ Evelyn: A True Story ➝ 95 Years with John "Jack" Day: The Orphan Nobody Wanted, an Autobiography (not available online) ➝ Shadows in Paradise ➝ Out of the Mist & Steam ➝ Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina ➝ The God Squad ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Will Trent (TV series) 2022 Will Trent is the creation of Karen Slaughter, an American crime writer. He was a foundling who grew up in the harsh environment of the Atlanta Children’s Home. He now has a university degree and works as a Special Agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The television series based on Karen Slaughter books featuring Will Trent was released on 3 January 2023 with Will Trent played by Ramon Rodriguez. External Website

Television Shows The English 2022 The English (2022) is a revisionist Western, a television series set in 1890 and starring Emily Blunt as Lady Cornelia Locke and Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp. Cornelia Locke has come to America seeking revenge on the man she believes is responsible for the death of her 14-year-old son. Along the way, she meets Eli Whipp, an ex-US cavalry man and member of the Pawnee Nation. Locke and Whipp rescue the 2 orphaned children of a Mennonite couple who have been slaughtered, and Locke delivers the children to the larger Mennonite group. Locke and Whipp also take care of another orphaned boy, White Moon. After a while they entrust White Moon to a travelling surgeon who aspires to establishing a Wild West Show. 13 years later and back in England, Cornelia Locke gets to see White Moon again as he now stars in the touring Wild West Show. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Delma Hughes: I grew up in a world without parents Delma Hughes 2010 Delma Hughes spent most of her childhood in care. She didn't realise she had a mother and father – she didn't even know her date of birth – but her big sister meant the world to her. Taken into care at just 18 months old, Delma grew up without knowing she had parents, siblings, or even a birthday. Shuffled through 20 different placements and routinely medicated, she experienced a childhood devoid of love, stability, or identity. Her one anchor was her sister Lucy, but even they were separated by the system—an all-too-common practice that continues today, with 86% of children in care still split from their siblings. Determined to turn her pain into change, she founded Siblings Together in 2008, a charity that reunites siblings separated in care through holiday camps. Her work is a direct response to the system's failures, offering children the connection, memories, and healing that she was denied. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The WOTS Family Cheryl Campbell 2009 WOTS stands for Ward of the State. Cheryl was born in 1961, in Mt Isa, Queensland. She first lived with her grandparents, but when she went to live with her mother, her mother's partner was physically and sexually abusive. Running away to escape being raped by the man set Sharon up for becoming a Ward of the State. In many ways being a Ward of the State and living in foster care or in a residential care facility was far preferable to living with her mother and various dubious partners. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Nothing Else Louise Beech 2022 Louise Beech's 8th novel created in lockdown, inspired by her own childhood care records, by the love she has for her sisters, and by the music she heard as a child when her father played. Heather Harris is a piano teacher and professional musician, whose quiet life revolves around music, whose memories centre on a single song that haunts her. A song she longs to perform again. A song she wrote as a child, to drown out the violence in their home. A song she played with her little sister, Harriet. But Harriet is gone … she disappeared when their parents died, and Heather never saw her again. When Heather is offered an opportunity to play piano on a cruise ship, she leaps at the chance. She’ll read her recently released childhood care records by day – searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance – and play piano by night … coming to terms with the truth about a past she’s done everything to forget. An exquisitely moving novel about surviving devastating trauma, about the unbreakable bond between sisters, Nothing Else is also a story of courage and love, and the power of music to transcend – and change – everything. External Website

Television Shows Young Wallander 2022 The Young Wallander series is based on the novels by Swedish writer Henning Mankell), is a left wing social critic.The second season of Young Wallander (2022) opens with the release from prison of a former foster child convicted of murder 8 years previously. By the end of the season, we find out that he wasn't responsible. Instead, a high profile government official is revealed to have been protecting his daughter. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Son of Sin Omar Sakr 2022 Son of Sin tells the story of Jamal who is coming to terms with being a queer Arab-Australian Muslim. He is growing up in an Australia where Islamophobio is rife and in a Muslim community that considers homosexuality as haram, a sin. Jamal lives with his mother and his brother, Moses, but for the first 7 years of his life he lived with an aunty, thinking the aunty was his mother. External Website

Television Shows Troppo 2022 Troppo is a new Australian drama series set in Far North Queensland and based on the book, Crimson Lake, by Candice Fox. The show features a young woman, Amanda Pharrell (Nicole Chamoun) who was incarcerated at the age of 16 for 12 years. Amanda Pharrell sets herself up in business as a private investigator, teaming up with a disgraced former detective, Ted Conkaffey (Thomas Jane). Their first gig is to locate a missing Korean man. The show is replete with odd balls, crocodiles and snake venom - and a well drawn, non-stereotypical Care Experienced character. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Investigator John Sandford 2023 Letty Davenport is the adopted daughter of Lucas Davenport, hero of a previous series by Sandford. In this new series Letty becomes a criminal investigaor in her own right. External Website

Films/Videos Hillbilly Elegy 2020 Hillbilly Elegy is a movie starring Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and Gabriel Basso. A Yale law student drawn back to his hometown grapples with family history, Appalachian values, the American dream, and the time he chose to live with his grandmother who offered more stability and encouragement with his schooling. External Website

Writers Allan Jenkins 1954- English writer and journalist, Allan Jenkins (b. 1954), was in Plymouth children’s homes and foster care as a child. He spent the longest period (from age five) with foster parents Lilian and Dudley Drabble, in rural Devon. Here he was renamed Peter Drabble and encouraged to garden. Allan was in foster care with the Drabbles with his brother, Chris, but both boys were rejected by their foster parents as teenagers. Allan went to university in his thirties, and became a journalist at the age of 36. By 2006 he was the editor of the Observer Magazine. In 2017 Allen published his memoir, Plot 29, and followed this with a meditation, Morning, in 2018. He is currently editor of Observer Food Monthly. External Website

Academic Articles Blood Doesn't Define Evotypical Families: Eleanor Spence's Stories of Informal and Formal Foster Care in Australia Dee Michell 2021 Because of their non-normative nature, Australian foster families are not always treated “as families in their own right” according to Riggs, Delfabbro and Augoustinos (2009, p. 792, emphasis in the original). And until recently a variety of sibling bonds—between birth siblings, between biological and foster children, and between foster children in the one foster family—have, as Adam McCormick (2010) and colleagues at CREATE Foundation (2013) and the Australian Catholic University have pointed out (2014), received little attention in research. Yet the close family bonds between the blood unrelated are a central theme in The Switherby Pilgrims (1967), Jamberoo Road (1969) and The Left Overs (1982) – all written by award-winning and internationally recognised Australian children’s writer, Eleanor Spence (1928-2008). By calling on the contemporary conception of ‘evotypical’ family, in this paper, Dee Michell argues that Spence created evotypical families in these three novels and well in advance of Australian society accepting a diversity of families as the ‘norm’. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The True Story Behind the Netflix Series 'Unbelievable' Mahita Gajanan 2019 An article on the true story which inspired the Netflix series, 'Unbelievable'. External Website

Television Shows The Town 2012 The Town (2012) is a 3 part British television series, with kinship care as a central theme. Mark Nicholas (Andrew Scott) returns to his hometown of Renton after his parents die. He moves in with his 15-year-old sister, Jodie (Avugauk Tkakun) and his grandmother (Julia McKenzie) lives in the home too. Mark then begins to investigate the supposed suicide of his parents. External Website

Radio & Podcast Forest hermit to Professor:Dr Gregory P Smith TEDxTalks Dr Gregory P. Smith was in orphanage as a child, dropped off there by his mother one day. As an adult, and feeling disillusioned, he lived for 10 years as hermit in a rainforest near Byron Bay, NSW. One he came out of the forest, he decided he needed an education of he was going to cope with life. He now has a PhD in Sociology and teaches at Southern Cross University in Lismore, NSW. He published his memoir, Out of the Forest, in 2018. External Website