News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Care Leavers Facing ‘Vile’ Assessments in Postcode Lottery when Becoming Mothers Sophia Alexandra Hall 2021 The question being asked in this article is: Why are formerly looked-after children having to undergo ‘pre-birth assessments’ when becoming parents themselves? External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience A Whole Life Robert Seethaler 2015 Andreas Egger’s first memory is of arriving in an Austrian mountain village in 1902 at about 4 years of age. His mother has died from tuberculosis and the only reason Andreas is allowed to stay with his uncle, farmer Hubert Kranzstocker, is because money comes with the boy. Andreas’ second memory is of being 8 years of age and beaten so badly by his uncle that his thigh is broken. After the bonesetter comes, Andreas spends 6 weeks lying down in the attic on a straw mattress. He limps for the rest of his life. Andreas rebels against his uncle's violence and begins his adult life at 18 by taking on casual labouring jobs. Andreas goes on to survive the devastating loss of his wife, 8 years in a prison of war camp in Russia, and the swarm of tourists to the village. Towards the end of his life, Andreas concludes that he has led a good life. External Website

Radio & Podcast PG Wodehouse Great Lives 2017 In this Great Lives episode, Stephen Fry talks about PG Wodehouse (1881-1975), one of his favourite writers. Included in the discussion is the young Pelham Grenville’s childhood away from his parents (dad was a magistrate working in the then British colony of Hong Kong). A ‘child of the Empire’ Stephen Fry calls him. Because it was aunts often looking after Pelham rather than his parents – he felt parcelled around - aunts tend to feature in his stories rather than parents. PG Wodehouse was a prolific writer. His creations include Bertie Wooster and his wise valet, Jeeves. External Website

Writers Barbara Sumner (Writer) Babara Sumner was born in New Zealand and adopted when she was 10 days old. She has written for The New Zealand Herald and her first book, This Way of Life - based on her award winning film of the same name - was published in 2012. Sumner published her memoir of being adopted and tracing her family of origin (published by Massey University Press) in 2020. External Website

Authors E ‘Is this a joke?’ Exploring how care experienced people feel their way through inheritance and what their emotions ‘do’, ➝ Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Man on Fire 2026 Man on Fire (2026) is an American action thriller based on the eponymous 1980 novel by English writer Philip Nicholson, using the pseudonym AJ. Quinnell. The protagonist is John Creasy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen), a former soldier who is suffering from PTSD & is an alcoholic. After attempting suicide, his friend Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) suggests he travel to Brazil with him to work to do security work. Creasy hasn’t been long in Brazil when a bomb blast kills Rayburn & his family except for their eldest daughter Poe (Billie Boullet) who was out with friends at the time of the blast. Because the now orphaned 15-year-old Poe is a witness, criminals are out to kill her too. Creasy takes on the task of protecting Poe and taking revenge against the people who killed his friend. While Poe is in hiding, another orphan, teenager Livro (Jefferson Baptista), is sent to take care of her & the 2 form a close bond. External Website

Television Shows How to get to Heaven from Belfast 2026 How to get to Heaven from Belfast (2026) is an Irish comedy thriller series created by Lisa McGee. When 3 close friends from Belfast receive the news that their teenage friend, Greta, has unexpectedly died, they travel to County Donegal to attend the wake. However, the 3 become suspicious – is their friend really dead? *Spoiler Alert* At the heart of the story is that of the different outcomes for 2 girls who were the victims of severe neglect & abuse while growing up in a village called “Heaven’s Veil”. They’d been told God would save them & when that didn’t happen, they set fire to the village church. What they didn’t know is that there were children in the church, & those children died. One of the girls, Greta, was given up for adoption to a psychiatrist named Margo who moved the child from the village. She ended up in a school where she met the 3 who came to the wake. We don’t know what happened to the other girl, Jodie, except they she was compelled to stay in the village. Later, all 5 girls – as teenagers – become involved in the murder of a journalist who wanted to find out why Greta & Jodie burned down the church. External Website

Television Shows The Clearing 2023 The Clearing (2023) is an Australian thriller based on the book In the Clearing (2020) by JP Pomare. The Pomare book was inspired by actual events—Australian Anne Hamilton-Byrne headed apolalptic sect called The Family, prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s for almost 30 years. Hamilton-Byrne ‘adopted’ a number of children; she then controlled them beatings, drugs and withholding food. The TV series (on Hulu & Disney) is centred on Freya who begins to confront memories of her childhood after a child is kidnapped in her hometown. Freya becomes determined to stop a cult from harming more children. External Website

Television Shows Breaking the Silence: Britain's Adoption Scandal 2016 On 9 November 2016 Breaking the Silence: Britain's Adoption Scandal was broadcast in Britain. The documentary tells the story of 7 women who had their babies stolen from them because they were unmarried. Medical professionals, 'moral welfare workers' and some parents insisted the women could not raise a child on their own. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the catholic church in England and Wales, apologises at the end of the documentary for the "grief and pain" caused by the practice of forced adoptions. There were also messages of 'regret' from the salvation army and the church of england. The documentary can be watched on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51L8-3QENA External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Lonely Little Girl Goes to University Pam Petrilli 2015 Pam Petrilli was in foster care as a child. In this chapter she talks of going to university as a mature age student, encouraged by her daughter. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Mommie Dearest (autobiography) Christina Crawford 1978 An expose of abuse experienced by adoptee, Christina Crawford, at the hands of her adoptive mother, American film star Joan Crawford. External Website

Authors O And the clock struck thirteen: The life and thoughts of Kaurna Elder Uncle Lewis Yerloburka O'Brien as told to Mary-Anne Gale ➝ Rememberings ➝ The Other Side of Absence ➝ The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream ➝ You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are ➝ Left unsaid: a triumph of sibling love over parental neglect & institutional care ➝ Childhood Interrupted ➝ Whispering Hope ➝ Hitler's Forgotten Children ➝ That Reminds Me: Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020 ➝ It's about Healing: Our Story ➝ A Place called Hope ➝ Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance ➝ I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond ➝ Someone to Love Us ➝ Back to Top

Authors M The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood ➝ Kincora: Britain's Shame ➝ Roots: The eco-Journal ➝ Unbelievable: The shocking truth behind the hit Netflix series ➝ Back to Top

Non Fiction Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Child in Foster Care Jennifer Toth 1997 In this book, journalist Jennifer Toth has spoken with the children and young people caught up in America's foster care system. A 1997 review in the New York Times made the observations: "Orphanages and foster homes are sometimes called substitute care, but Jennifer Toth makes it heartbreakingly plain in "Orphans of the Living" that there is no substitute for the love and security of a family... Ms Toth is outraged by society's failure to care properly for its victimized children..." External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Bee and the Orange Tree Melissa Ashley 2019 The Bee and the Orange Tree (2019) by Australian writer Melissa Ashley tells the story of French author Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy (c 1651 – 1705) who published the 1st ever literary fairy tale and who coined the term “fairy tale”. One of the principal characters in the story is Marie Catherine’s imagined daughter Angelina who was raised in a convent from the age of 4 – allegedly so Angelina won’t be married off early - and who has recently been set free to work as Marie Catherine’s sectary. Angelina is acutely aware that to the convent come pregnant women who leave their newborn babies behind. There are also orphans living there. The novel concludes with Marie Catherine overcoming a bout of writer’s block and penning “The Bee and the Orange Tree”, first published by the actual Marie Catherine in 1697 and about a baby princess who was shipwrecked and taken in by a couple of ogres. This fairy tale was retold for a German audience a century later in a Brothers Grimm anthology. External Website

Films/Videos Mr Pip (film) 2012 Mr Pip (2012) is an adaption of Lloyd Jones' 2006 novel, Mister Pip. Hugh Laurie stars as Mr Watts and Matilda is played by Xzannjah Matsi. The film was shot in Bourgainville, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and is set during the civil war in Bourgainville. Mr Watts - the only white man lived on the island - becomes the village school teacher and reads a chapter of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations everyday. Matilda finds the story an escape at a time when there is serious conflict happening in Bourgainville. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class Rob Henderson 2024 In his recently published memoir, Troubled, Rob Henderson reflects on his time growing up in the American foster care system and enlisting in the US Air Force before going on to study at Yale. He completed his tertiary education with a PhD from Cambridge. While he was at university, Henderson thought deeply about class distinctions and came up with the concept of luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson writes in this article about his idea that “luxury beliefs” are “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes”. He writes: “In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more accessible than before. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs.” External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Tattycoram Audrey Thomas 2010 Caricatured by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit as the cantankerous maid of Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, "Tattycoram" tells her own life story in this metafiction and taking readers into the distant fictional world of Charles Dickens's England, where, in an unusual twist, Dickens interacts with his own characters. Harriet Coram gains a poignant personal history. Abandoned as a baby at the London Foundling Hospital and cared for by a kindly foster mother until the age of five, the young Hattie attracts the attention of the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, who hires her as the family housemaid. In the Dickens household, Charles's sister Miss Georgina takes an instant dislike to Hattie's pretty looks and trains her caged raven to tease her with the mocking nickname of Tattycoram. Although Hattie escapes from Dickens and his family to care for her dying foster mother in the country, she is later swept back under the famous author's sphere of observation as a teacher in his newly founded school for released female convicts. There she befriends Elizabeth Avis, who also appears as another minor character from Little Dorrit. In typical Dickensian fashion, Hattie meets not one, but two, long-lost brothers and falls in love with the one who conveniently turns out not to be her "real" brother. But first, she must confront her benefactor about his shameless misrepresentation of her and Elizabeth's characters in his latest novel. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Girl in the Spider's Web (novel) David Lagercrantz 2015 The Girl in the Spider's Web is the 4th novel in the Millennium series (the 1st 3 were written by Stieg Larsson). It uses the characters of hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. The book was written in secrecy by David Lagercrantz who worked on a computer that didn't have an internet connection. Larsson's estate is controlled by Larsson's brother and father who hired Lagercrantz. In the novel, Lisbeth Salander becomes entangled with the Spider Society which is run by Lisbeth's sister, Camilla, who has taken over the criminal operation run by the girls' father. Lagercrantz has gone on to write 2 more books in the series - The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (2017) and The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019). External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters What Works for Young People Leaving Care? Mike Stein 2004 What Works for Young People Leaving Care? Assesses the implication of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and explores related research in the context of history, law, practice and social and economic structures. The author examines the problems and challenges faced by young people leaving care, the services that are being provided to meet the needs of young people leaving care, the outcomes of leaving care services, and the relationship between research and theory. This wide-ranging appraisal of evidence-based practice will be invaluable for all those involved in developing and providing services for young people leaving care. External Website