Autobiography/Memoir Down and Out: Surviving the Homelessness Crisis Daniel Lavelle 2022 Daniel Lavelle is a UK based freelance writer, who has written for The Guardian on social problems including homelessness and mental illness. He left care at 19, and experienced homelessness for the first time not long after. So began a life spent navigating social services that were not fit for purpose, leaving Daniel and many like him slipping through the cracks. In Down and Out, Daniel draws on his own experiences - as well as those of the witty, complex, hopeful individuals he has encountered who have been shunned or forgotten by the state that is supposed to provide for them - in order to shine a powerful light on this dire situation. Down and Out is a true state-of-the-nation examination of modern homelessness: assessing its significance, its precursors and causes, as well as the role played by government, austerity, charities, and other systems in perpetuating this crisis. Ultimately, it seeks to ask how we as a society might change our practices and attitudes so that, one day, we can bring this injustice to an end. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Kids of Rutherford County The Kids of Rutherford County 2023 The Kids of Rutherford County (2023) is a 4-part investigative journalism podcast. It is hosted by Meribah Knight and explores the wrongful detention of school children in Rutherford County, Tennessee, some of whom were as young as 7 years of age and some of whom were detailed because they witnessed a fight in a school yard. Many of the children were held in solitary confinement while detained, even though that is prohibited under Tennessee law. Donna Scott Davenport is the judge who had oversight for the Rutherford County juvenile justice system from 2000 until she retired in September 2022. She allegedly saw herself as “the mother of the county”. External Website

Non Fiction Every childhood lasts a lifetime: personal stories from the frontline of family breakdown Jan Owens 1996 Stories from young people affected by the state care system in Australia, as told to Jan Owen. External Website

Films/Videos Small Axe, Series 1, Alex Wheatle 2020 The true story of writer Alex Wheatle who grew up in care and his spell in prison after the Brixton riots. Alex Wheatle follows the true story of award-winning writer, Alex Wheatle (Sheyi Cole), from a young boy through his early adult years. Having spent his childhood in a mostly white institutional care home with no love or family, he finally finds not only a sense of community for the first time in Brixton, but his identity and ability to grow his passion for music and DJing. When he is thrown in prison during the Brixton Uprising of 1981, he confronts his past and sees a path to healing. External Website

Actors Harry H. Corbett Harry H. Corbett, OBE (28 February 1925 – 21 March 1982) was an English actor and comedian, who co-starred in the long-running BBC television sitcom Steptoe and Son alongside Wilfrid Brambell, which was broadcast from 1962–65 and 1970–74. Harry Corbett was born in Rangoon, Burma where his father was serving in the British Army. Harry was just 18 months old when his mother died and he was sent back to Britain to live with relatives. Corbett served during the World War II with the Royal Marines. He then began acting with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in London. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Magician Colm Toibin 2021 The Magician (2021) by Irish writer Colm Toibin is the fictionalised biography of German great Thomas Mann (1875-1955). Early in the novel we learn that Thomas Mann’s mother moved from Brazil to Lubeck, Germany as a small child and was in kinship care. “In Lubeck, Julia was remembered as a small girl arriving with her sister and her three brothers after their mother had died. They were taken care of by an uncle…” (3). Later, we find out that after Thomas Mann’s father died when the boy was about 15, Thomas went into an informal foster care arrangement while his mother and 3 youngest children moved to Munich. “…leaving Thomas behind to complete his final year at school while boarding in the house of Doctor Timpe…” (19). Doctor Timpe was one of Thomas’ school teachers. The boy had “a small bedroom at the back of the top floor Doctor Timpe’s house” (23). External Website

Writers AUTHORS Y External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Man who Made Husbands Jealous Jilly Cooper 1993 The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous is part of the The Rutshire Chronicles (1985-2023) a series of romantic novels. Set in the fictional county of Rutshire, characters recur across the series repeatedly, including the upper-class MP Rupert Campbell-Black. Rupert and his second wife Taggie O’Hara adopt two little South American children. This softens Rupert’s character considerably, as throughout earlier books he was notorious for being a ruthless, womanising cad. External Website

Radio & Podcast Mary Wilson — Dream Girl Mary Wilson 2021 The late Mary Wilson rose up from Detroit's housing projects to find worldwide fame with The Supremes. For some years she thought her aunt and uncle were her parents. External Website

Television Shows The Woman in the Wall 2023 `The Woman in the Wall' starring Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack, follows the horrors experienced by an Irish woman Lorna Brady, who wakes one morning to find a dead body in her house. Lorna has no idea who the dead woman is, or even of her own culpability, as she suffers from extreme bouts of sleepwalking from her time incarcerated in the infamous Kilkinure Convent. inspired by real-life stories of those who spent time imprisoned in Magdalene Laundries. Detective Colman Akande, who hides his own past, starts investigating her for a crime that is unrelated to the dead woman. The series also covers illegal adoptions by the convent part of the UK/Eire wide thousands of women forced to give up their babies. Including the detective's own birth in a convent. External Website

Radio & Podcast The UpEND Podcast The UpEND Podcast 2023 UpEND is a movement by activists in the United States to abolish the existing child welfare system, which they call he ‘family policing system’. There is now an UpEND podcast available and in the first episode Alan Dettlaff explains the need for abolition rather than reform. External Website

Writers Hugh Leonard 1926-2009 Hugh Leonard (1926 – 2009) was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. He was born John Joseph Byrne in Dublin, but was adopted as a baby and his name changed to John Keyes Byrne. Leonard began his working life in the civil service during which time he wrote plays and acted in community theatre performances. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first major Irish writer to establish himself in television. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote nearly 30 full-length plays, 10 one-act plays, three volumes of essays, two autobiographies, three novels, numerous screenplays and teleplays, and a regular newspaper column. External Website

Writers Lisa Cherry Lisa Cherry spent time in care from 13 years old. She later experienced homelessness before being picked up and supported by a charity. Cherry is an author and a leading international trainer and consultant, specialising in assisting those in Education, Social Care and Adoption and Fostering to understand trauma, recovery and resilience for vulnerable children, young people and their families. Lisa has over 30 years of experience in this field and combines academic knowledge and research with professional skills and personal experience. Lisa completed her DPhil research at The University of Oxford in the Department of Education. The research asked "How do care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging?" She has written 3 books: The Brightness of Stars; https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/conversations-that-make-a-difference-for-children-and-young-people%3A-relationship-focused-practice-from-the-frontline; and Weaving a Web of Belonging: Developing a Trauma-Informed Culture for All Children External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles How Horseback Riding Helped Barbara Stanwyck Rise Above Hollywood Misogyny Literary Hub 2023 Care Experienced Actor Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) starred in Westerns from the 1940s, doing many of her own stunts. In this article for Literary Hub, Catherine Russell argues that it was through doing this stunt work—during which she was frequently injured—that Stanwyck was able to challenge some of the “entrenched misogyny of the industry”. Stanwyck apparently insisted on doing her own stunts because she thought it “contributed to the consistency of characterization” although there were times when doubles were used too. Russell concludes with this observation: “If women riding bicycles in Victorian times were considered transgressive, women straddling horses in mid-20th century America were likewise titillating. To Stanwyck’s credit, she consistently rose above such gender nonsense with her posture and her strong characters. An exceptionally weak character, such as Cora in Trooper Hook, never rides horses but sticks to carriages." External Website

Radio & Podcast Andrea Levy - Small Island World Book Club 2019 A conversation with Andrea Levy (1956-2019) about her novel Small Island (2004). Small Island centres around 4 characters: Hortense (who was in kinship care as a child), Queenie, Gilbert and Bernard. The focus is on the migration of Jamaicans to England during and after WWII. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia Santilla Chingaipe 2024 Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia (2024) by Santilla Chingaipe tells a story few Australians know – that on the First Fleet in 1788 there were at least 15 convicts with African heritage. By 1840 the number of arrivals to Australia with African heritage number had increased to almost 500 & among them were Khoi chief David Stuurman (c 1773 – 1830) who was transported because of his political agitation; John Caesar (c 1763-1796) who was Australia’s 1st bushranger; ferryman Billy Blue (c 1767-1834) whose name is recognised in Sydney’s Blues Point; & William Cuffay (1788-1870), a Chartist who was also transported because of his involvement in a planned uprising. Santilla Chingaipe includes a chapter on children with African heritage who were also transported to Australia. One of the stories in Chapter 11: Minor Convictions is that of Constance Couronne who was only 9 years old when she was sent from Mauritius to Australia with her cousin, 12-year-old Elizabeth Verloppe. Both girls were born enslaved & in 1833 they were convicted of attempting to poison a dressmaker for whom they had been working. Constance & Elizabeth were first sent to the Female Factory in Parramatta but within a couple of months there were assigned to work for Henry Wilson, Sydney’s first police magistrate. Both girls lived out their lives in Australia. External Website

Academic theses Hiraeth (a novel): Representations of Care-Experience in Literature Rosie Canning ➝ Abandoned Children in Literature: The Orphans in J.K. Rowling’s Cecilia Friis ➝ The Orhan Among Us: An Examination of Orphans in Newbery Award Winning Literature April A Mattix ➝ Women and Music in the Venetian Ospedali Vanessa Tonelli ➝ How do care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging? Lisa Cherry ➝ The Fictional Onscreen Depiction of Looked-after Young People: "Finding someone just like me." John Hickman ➝ What Effect does Life Story Work have on Life Writing? Deyanna Ricketts ➝ Orphans and Class Anxiety in Nineteenth-century English Novels Junghan Choi ➝ What’s the story? Sociological explorations of the life course narratives of adults with care experience Catriona Hugman ➝ ‘Useful and worthy members of the colony’? : The life courses of the Point Puer boys who stayed in Tasmania Alistair Scott ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Caging Skies Christine Leunens 2019 This extraordinary novel is seen through the eyes of Johannes, an avid member of the Hitler Youth in the 1940s. After he is severely injured in a raid, he discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl called Elsa behind a false wall in their large house in Vienna. His initial horror turns to interest, then love and obsession. After the disappearance of his parents, Johannes finds he is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house, the only one responsible for her survival. Both manipulating and manipulated, Johannes dreads the end of the war: with it will come the prospect of losing Elsa and their relationship, which ranges through passion and obsession, dependence and indifference, love and hate.This gripping, masterful work examines truth and lies at both political and personal levels, laying bare the darkest corners of the human soul. External Website

Television Shows Freud 2020 The Austrian-German crime television series, Freud (2020) on (Netflix), features a young woman who is in foster care. Fleur Salome (Ella Rumpf) is a psychic medium living with foster parents Sophia and Viktor von Szapary. Fleur's psychic powers are used by the von Szapary's to gain money and social standing. Fleur has 2 personalities - one which is sweet and nice, and the other which is controlling and violent. Some say Fleur is based on Lou Andreas-Salome, a Russian born psychoanalyst and friend of Freud's (who was not in foster care as a child). External Website

Television Shows Hunters 2020 Drama series focused on the work of Nazi hunters in New York City in 1977. Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) takes his grandmother's place in the team of hunters after she is murdered. Jonah was raised in kinship care by his grandmother. External Website