Films/Videos The Secret Life of Bees (film) 2008 The Secret Life of Bees (2002) by Sue Monk Kidd was adapted for film in 2008. The film tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl who runs away from her home and searches out information about her mother. She ends up in the informal care of a Black woman, August Boatwright. With a stellar cast including Queen Latifah as August Boatwright and Dakota Fanning as Lily Owens, the film won the Favorite Movie Drama & Favorite Independent awards at the 35th People’s Choice Awards. The film also received 7 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Awards, including Outstanding Motion Picture. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The story of Mary Bell Gitta Sereny 1998 Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The story of Mary Bell (1998) by Gitta Sereny is the result of a collaboration between Mary Bell & writer Gitta Sereny. Mary Bell was convicted of 2 counts of manslaughter in December 1968 when she was 11 years of age. Gitta Sereny spent something like 5 months interviewing Mary Bell after she was released from prison in May 1980 at the age of 23. She explored the abuse & neglect Mary Bell had experienced as a child and thought her crimes could be explained by this. Apparently Sereny paid Mary Bell for those 5 months of interviews, which led to a public outcry as there was concern that a killer was profiting from her crimes. External Website

Writers Martyn Percy British writer and theologian, Martyn Percy (b. 1962) was born in a mothers and babies home in England and then adopted. After a university education and brief career in publishing he was ordained as a Church of England priest in 1991. Percy was elected as Dean of Christ College, University of Oxford in 2014. Many of his years at Christ College were marred by disputes. He resigned in April 2022 and received a payout of over 1 million points to cover legal fees and as compensation. In May 2022, Martyn Percy anounced his intention to leave the Church of England, citing concerns about bullying within the church. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Alternatives Caoilinn Hughes 2024 The Alternatives (2024) is the most recent novel by Irish writer, Caoilinn Hughes. Five sisters were orphaned 30 years ago, after which they effectively raised themselves. The oldest, Olwen Flattery, is a geology professor. Her 4 younger sisters all have PhD degrees. When Olwen disappears from her home, her sisters find her living in a remote house in rural Ireland. The unexpected reunion gives the 5 women an opportunity to review their lives, including examining old wounds. External Website

Academic Articles The Mem Sahib, the Worthy, the Rajah and His Minions: Some Reflections on the Class Politics of The Secret Garden Jerry Phillips 1993 The preeminent influence on twentieth-century British society has arguably been the decline of the British Empire. For over three hundred years, the construction and maintenance of the imperial system provoked themes which reverberated at every level of the British polity—that is to say, it set limits, effective cultural parameters, on what it was and what it meant in terms of lived experienced to be British in relation to foreigners from the four corners of the globe...Clearly, the British Empire was not the sole cause of any one of these historical trajectories, but its pervasive influence is detectable in all of them. Thus, the end of empire has had significant consequences on a number of fronts, ranging from the macroeconomic to the micropolitical. External Website

Films/Videos Sharper 2023 Sharper (2023) is an American thriller about a couple of fraudsters conning the super-rich. The story is told through a series of character vignettes. The movie begins with Tom (Justice Smith), a bookshop owner who is drawn to a customer Sandra (Briana Middleton) when they begin talking about her PhD project on black feminists. Sandra tells Tom that she was in foster care as a child. We find out later that Sandra or Sandy is on parole and has a long criminal history. And we know she had a difficult childhood. However, the foster care story is never confirmed. External Website

Television Shows Happy Valley 2014 Happy Valley is a British crime series created by Sally Wainwright. Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire), a police sergeant in West Yorkshire, is raising her grandson, Ryan (Rhys Connah), after the suicide of her daughter, Becky. In Series 1 (2014) Cawood is intent on locating Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) who is Ryan's father. Royce has served 8 years for drug charges and is now out of prison. In Series 2 (2016) Royce is serving a life sentence. Ryan develops a friendship with a teaching assistant who is infatuated with Royce and happy to encourage Ryan to meet his father. In Series 3 (2023) Ryan has been meeting his father in prison—to his grandmother’s horror—and is in court the day Royce escapes custody. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Lady Imposter The History Listen 2024 In this episode of History Listen, Australian actor Richard Roxburgh recounts the story of Alexandrina Grant (if that’s her real name) who was transported to Australia in 1845 for ““falsehoods, fraud and wilful imposition” in obtaining clothes.” Before being sent to Australia, Alexandrina had been convicted in Aberdeen for theft at the age of 17. Little is known of her childhood but that it was an ignominious start –Alexandrina was the “bastard child” of criminals who was born in gaol in Scotland and who was probably apprenticed as a servant when she was child, because this is often what happened to children with no parents. Alexandrina ended up living into her eighties, was married to a ‘free’ man, William Askew, give birth to 10 children, and – towards the end of her life – ran boarding houses in Redfern, Sydney. In the interim she attracted attention as a “notorious fraudster”, “A Lady Swindler”. External Website

Films/Videos Fathers and Daughters 2015 The 2015 film, Fathers & Daughters, tells the story of a family struggling for the custody of a child. After his wife dies in a car accident while he is driving, writer Jake Davis (Russel Crowe) goes into a psychiatric facility for 7 months to recover. His 5 year old daughter stays with her maternal aunt and family. When Jake returns to collect his daughter, the aunt wants to adopt Kate. Jake refuses and the aunt and her husband begin court proceedings. External Website

Sport British Javelin Thrower Fatima Whitbread Fatima Whitbread (b. 1961) is a British athlete, a world champion javelin-thrower. Fatima Vedad was born in London to Turkish Cypriot parents. She was left on her on own as a baby in a flat until a neighbour heard her crying and called the police. She spent the next 14 years living in the ‘care’ system. After a difficult early childhood, at age 14 Fatima Vedad was fostered by the family of Margaret Whitbread, a javelin coach. 2 years later, Fatima was the European junior javelin champion. She went on to won bronze & silver at the 1984 & 1988 Olympics. She broke the world record in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart. She also became the 1st British athlete to set a world record in throwing. Fatima Whitbread published her autobiography in 2012, https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/survivor%3A-the-shocking-and-inspiring-story-of-a-true-champion and a children’s book in 2024, https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/my-bright-shining-star External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles How damaging are stories of damage? Kenny Murray 2020 Kenny Murray writes about the negative representations of Care Experienced People. External Website

Authors Z Benjamin Zephaniah (Poet) ➝ Back to Top

Academic Books & Book Chapters Who Cares?: Young People in Care Speak Out Raissa Page, G A Clark (editors 1977 Written by a group of young people in care, this publications provided a platform from which they could speak freely about their hopes, aspirations, contentions, criticisms and fears. As well as detailing their experiences of public care, it highlighted those aspects of the system that needed addressing to ensure that it meets the social, emotional and educational needs of all children and young people. External Website

Authors R My mum has bipolar. My dad was a recovering alcoholic.' - Leeds City Council chief exec Tom Riordan on why we need to open up about mental illness ➝ Belgium found guilty of crimes against humanity in colonial Congo ➝ Katherine Rundell's top 10 orphans ➝ Like Jane Eyre, I’ve been seen as unconventional and abnormal. I’m autistic – is she too? ➝ Tasmania's connection to author Joseph Conrad remembered on anniversary of his death ➝ ‘I cried, I cried. I had no one’: the brutal child kidnappings that shamed Belgian Congo ➝ Chilean mother reunites with her twin daughters for the first time in 45 years ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Cascades Female Factory Australian Government 2022 The Cascades Female Factory in South Hobart operated between 1828 & 1856 as a “correction facility”. The first female convicts arrived from England on the Harmony in January 1829. Within 12 months there were almost 200 women & children incarcerated there. After women weaned their babies (between 6 & 9 months), the babies would be left in the nursery with another convict woman who had the care of multiple children. The mother would then be punished for the ‘crime’ of having gotten pregnant by being sent back to work with other “Crime Class” women. At the age of 3, the children would be sent from the Cascades to the Queen’s Orphan Asylum in New Town. The Cascades Female Factory was well known for the high rate of infant mortality. Between 1830 & 1838, for example, 26% of the infants born there died After the female factory closed in 1856, it continued as a prison between 1856 until 1877. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/national/cascade-female-factory External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Mistress's Daughter AM Homes 2007 In 2007, American writer A. M. Homes published her memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter’, which explored her experience of being adopted, of being “found” by her biological family, and of the histories of both her families. Homes was 31 when she was reunited with her birth parents, having been raised in Maryland by a couple who had recently lost a son because of kidney failure. “To be adopted is to be adapted” she writes. “To be amputated and sewn back together again. Whether or not you regain function, there will always be scar tissue.” External Website

Television Shows The Institute 2025 The Institute (2025) is an American horror series based on the eponymous novel by Stephen King. Ms Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker) runs a secretive place called The Institute where children are experimented on before disappearing, ostensibly going back home. Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) is a 14-year-old who is abducted from his home and wakes up in The Institute. Told he has special abilities (& he is clever), Luke finds out that his parents were murdered on the night he was kidnapped and about why children are being held there and where they disappear to. While Luke is working out what’s going on inside The Institute, Tim (Ben Barnes) is a cop who has wandered into town & taken on a job he is over-qualified for, that of Night Knocker. The Night Knocker prowls the local streets at night making sure all is well. The Institute has been running for about 70 years & there are stories over the years of children mysteriously disappearing, stories that Tim finds out about. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Ginny Moon Benjamin Ludwig 2017 Ginny is fourteen years old and has autism. She likes the colour red, making lists and knowing exactly what time it is. She doesn’t like hugs, surprises or people telling lies. After years in foster care, she has finally found her forever family. She has a new house, new parents and even a new name. But Ginny also has a Big Secret Plan of Escape. Every day she wakes up at nine o’clock and eats nine grapes for breakfast. Because when she was nine years old something terrible happened. Something only Ginny knows. And she’s the only one who can put it right… External Website

Radio & Podcast Madam CJ Walker You're Dead to Me (Madam CJ Walker) 2024 In this episode of You’re Dead to Me https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/madam-c-j-walker/id1479973402?i=1000643787226 Greg Jenner discusses Madam CJ Walker’s life—from being orphaned early, to growing up in kinship care, to disastrous marriages and finally to becoming a haircare entrepreneur—with Professor Noliwe Rooks and comedian Athena Kugblenu. External Website

Television Shows Unforgotten 2021 Unforgotten is an English crime drama series which first aired in 2015 and which starred Nicola Walker for the first 4 series. Series 4 of the British crime drama series, Unforgotten, has a former foster kid put in a brief appearance. Jerome Walsh is the son of the murdered man in the series, Matthew Walsh, and he was in and out of foster care, but in employment at the time of his father's murder being investigated. One of the suspects in the show, Fiona, has a criminal past and she has been posing as a former foster kid so she doesn't have to talk about her family of origin with her own family. In Series 5, there is a complicated story involving intergenerational trauma for 4 generations of a family at one end of the social spectrum, while at the other end there is immense privilege, including non-accountability for committing crimes. Included in the causes of intergenerational trauma are rape, racism, kinship care, abuse at the hands of a cult leader, foster care and homelessness. Several members of the family have criminal records. External Website