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

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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

Fiction featuring Care Experience Daphis and Chloe 1989 In the late second century A.D., the ancient Greek writer Longus wrote the story of two children Daphnis and Chloe abandoned with specific tokens and claimed to be the first romance novel. Lamon, a goatherd, discovers Daphnis, while Chloe is found by Dryas, a shepherd. Each decides to raise the found child as their own. Growing up together, the mischievous god of love, Eros, creates in them a sudden overpowering desire for one another and they fall in love but are naive about their feelings. Guided by a wise cowherd, they learn about love through a remedy of kissing. Despite facing challenges, including abduction attempts and perilous situations, they are eventually recognized by their birth parents. In the end, Daphnis and Chloe get married and lead a tranquil life in the countryside. External Website

Television Shows The Sandman 2022 The Sandman is an American fantasy drama television series based on the comic book of the same name written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Dream, the personification of dreams and one of the seven Endless, is captured in an occult ritual in 1916. After being held captive for 106 years, Dream escapes and sets out to restore order to his realms, The Dreaming. Story of foster kids in the final episodes. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Les Misérables (novel) Victor Costa Hugo et al. 2016 Les Misérablesis a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, and considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. The prevalence of orphans and unusual family structures in Les Misérables is the most obvious indicator that French society and politics in the period described have gone terribly wrong. Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, Marius, Gavroche, Pontmercy, and Gillenormand are all separated from their family or loved ones for economic or political reasons. Marius embodies the disastrous effects of politics on family structure, torn as he is between Gillenormand’s monarchism and Pontmercy’s embrace of Napoléon. Social instability and poverty, meanwhile, make orphans of Cosette, Valjean, Fantine, and Gavroche. With the exception of Gavroche, whose home life is so wretched that he is probably better off on his own, these characters are unhappy and lonely because they are separated from their parents and have no one to turn to when they most need help. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time Karen Armstrong 2007 Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was orphaned at the age of 6 and grew up in kinship care first with his grandfather and then with an uncle. In this biography, British scholar Karen Armstrong presents Muhamma in his historic context and distinguishes between Islamic law and the cultural practices of Islam. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir God was always there Deidre Michell 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. External Website