Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Children’s rights Movement and the Charity sector. Sean Geoghegan 2021 In this blog, Sean Geoghan discusses the relationship between the Care Experienced community and the charity sector, including a history of the National Association of Young People in Care (NAYPIC). External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Shaken by their pasts, inter-country adoptees demand federal government broaden inquiry scope ABC News 2026 Following the Australian government saying it is investigating the South Korean-based Eastern Social Welfare Society, other international adoptees have come forward requesting the government to broaden their enquiry. For example, adoptee Kimbra Butterworth, who was born in Taiwan, says that she doesn’t know the identity of her biological parents because the adoption papers forged those names. Another woman, Lynelle Long, was taken from Vietnam in 1973. When she applied for a driver’s license at the age of 16, she discovered her adoption had never actually been processed meaning the Australian immigration minister was technically her guardian. Lynelle Long took her Australian adoptive father to court & had the adoption annulled. The man had sexually abused her & is now on the sex offender registry. External Website

A Digital Archive, the first of its kind featuring care experienced literature, spoken word and academic material. Dr. Rosie Canning (UK) & Dr Dee Michell (Australia) are Care Experienced scholars with a lifelong passion for reading. Having experienced many benefits from reading as a pastime and aware of the varied representations of CEP over time, Rosie and Dee developed this Digital Archive, a one-stop accessible site with information about Care Experienced characters in fiction and on-screen, as well as Care Experienced writers, artists, actors and many more. Trauma warning: This archive contains material relating to care experience, including references to abuse, neglect, sexual violence, and institutional harm. Hear Dee speak about the digital archive: The Digital Archive will build from work Rosie and Dee have already undertaken. They both have collections (Rosie’s mostly British and Dee’s mostly Australian) of stories written about Care Experienced characters and Care Experienced People - writers, artists, actors etc - many of these will form the ‘backend’ of the Digital Archive, to be called Care Experience & Culture DEFINITION OF CARE EXPERIENCE: Our definition of Care Experience includes statutory provisions as well as informal arrangements made through friends/family for children living in foster, residential, kinship care and children who have been adopted. We have also included experiences of some children who were displaced from their first family, enslaved, abandoned by family, or had their childhoods interrupted. We have included these experiences to recognise the emotional & psychological impact of children being displaced from family - however this happens - and do not include these in the traditional experience of ‘care’. See glossary HERE Dee was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Criminology & Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide and recently retired. She was in foster care for 15 years from the age of 3 and is the co-author (with Nell Musgrove) of The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia - Just Like a Family (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Rosie completed her PhD in the Department of English at the University of Southampton. The focus of her research is the representations of orphans and care leavers in literature. Hiraeth her PhD novel, follows 16 year old Marianne as she leaves care in the mid-1970s. Dr. Rosie was in foster and residential care for 17 years from the age of 6 weeks. Webmaster Consultant Jamie Crabb is based in London. Following his degree in drama and education, he worked in education, disability, mental health and wellbeing roles before training as a psychotherapist/counsellor. He co-edited Study Skills for Students with Dyslexia (Support for Specific Learning Differences). He is a member of Reclaim Care , a collective focused on healing together, supporting each other, understanding shared histories and imagining possible futures.

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Artists Ivan Durrant Australian painter, Ivan Durrant (b. 1947) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, one of 7 children. He was 7 when his mother – influenced by the father’s alcoholism- put her children into state care. Ivan lived in an orphanage from 1954 to 1962, but often went into foster care on farms during summer holidays. It was there he developed his passion for birds and animals. After Ivan was reunited with his family in 1962, he developed his interest in painting and held his first exhibition in St Kilda during 1970. Ivan Durrant is now known as an artist who uses art to create “great schock value”. His work is held in many public collections, including in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. External Website

Academic Articles A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults Jim Goddard 2008 A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults. Jim Goddard, Julia Feast & Derek Kirton: For people who have spent part or all of their childhoods in care, access to information about family history and events that have happened during their childhood can offer significant benefits. It can provide a chronological history, explain the reasons for coming into care and help to build a fuller sense of the enquirer’s current identity. While the principle of providing such information has long been recognised, those formerly in care have faced numerous challenges in gaining access to their records. If you can't get access to this article, email: careexpereinceandculture@gmail.com and we'll pass on your request to Jim Goddard, Chair of The Care Leavers' Association. External Website

Radio & Podcast Jackie Kay: Trumpet World Book Club 2018 Jackie Kay in conversation with the World Book Club community about her award winning debut novel, Trumpet (1998). External Website

Cartoons Not so broken - The Fostering Network 2017 This short, moving animation, and accompanying book, was launched alongside an exhibition showcasing artistic work produced in a wide range of media by over 100 children and young people in foster care across Northern Ireland. External Website

Films/Videos The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 film loosely based on a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film tells the story of a man (Brad Pitt) who is born as an 88 year old and immediately abandoned to a nursing home by his distressed father. Benjamin Button then ages in reverse, watching everyone else get older as he gets younger. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience No One Was Watching Annie Horner 2018 No One Was Watching, is a work of fiction. These stories, although informed by factual events, do not intend to speak for people who endured living in out-of-home ‘care’ during part or all of their childhood but instead provide an alternative, imaginative entrée into this once-hidden Australian history. No One Was Watching is a creative response to a seminal Senate report of 2004 entitled Forgotten Australians. Just as earlier reports had revealed serious abuses perpetrated against Indigenous children and the unaccompanied children sent as migrants from Britain and Malta, this report found that the same types of violations were committed against institutionalised Australian-born, non-Indigenous children. The men and women who experienced such childhoods self-identify as ‘forgotten Australians’, ‘care-leavers’, ‘care-survivors’, ‘Homies’ or ‘Wardies’. External Website

Writers David Plowman Academic and former child migrant, David Plowman (1941-2013) was a prolific writer. David was born in Malta and travelled to Australia in 1953 as part of the child migration scheme. He went to Tardun Farm School, and then on to the University of Western Australia. David completed his Honours degree in Economics from the University of Western Australia, which he followed with a Master of Arts in Industrial Relations at the University of Melbourne. His doctorate, on employer associations and wages in Australia, was completed through Flinders University in South Australia. He subsequently became an academic specialising in industrial relations and was head of the School of Industrial Relations at the University of New South Wales. When he returned to Perth in 1993, David Plowman was the Foundation Director of the Graduate School of Management at the University of Western Australia. During his career, Plowman wrote and co-wrote more than 130 journal articles and many books and textbooks on Australian industrial relations. Between 2002 and 2009, David was Chair of the Child Migrants of Malta (C-MOM) organisation which raised awareness of this demographic and was involved in successfully lobbying for memorial External Website

Television Shows China's Abandoned Daughters 2024 China’s Abandoned Daughters (2024) is an award-winning documentary from Channel News Asia. Between the 1970s and 1990s, many families affected by China’s one-child policy gave away baby girls. Many of these unwanted girls were given away, and sometimes were sold, to foster parents in rural provinces. The foster families took the baby girls in so they would grow up & marry their foster brothers. Often, they were treated as servants before then. Now, tens of thousands of women are looking for their families of origin. External Website

Academic Articles Lost Boys and Recovered Classics: Literary and Social Memory in Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (1995) Christopher Wilson 2008 Sleepers tells the story of 4 boys incarcarated in a juvenile detention centre where they were beaten and sexually abused. In this article, Christopher Wilson explores the interplay of social memory with the use of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Criso (1844-45) as a political marker and as the central text in Carcaterra's story. External Website

Radio & Podcast Hamilton: the man behind the musical History Extra 2018 In the exposide, the amazing life story of Alexander Hamilton is explored, with Ron Chernow, whose biography of the American Founding Father inspired the hip-hop musical sensation. Born out of wedlock in Charlestown, Nevis, Hamilton was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. He was given a scholarship and pursued an education. External Website

Radio & Podcast ‎Daddy-Less Issues Podcast on Apple Podcasts Chanel Ali Rollo et al. What is it like to live without a dad? How about without a dad AND a mom? Does a lack of parent's stunt or accelerate an artist's growth? How did they learn to tie thier shoes? Orphan comedians, Amber Rollo & Chanel Ali, have a guest on each week to talk about it and laugh at some supremely dark stuff. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Cider House Rules (Novel) John Irving 1985 The Cider House Rules (1985) by American writer John Irving is a bildungsroman, a story about Homer Wells who grows up in an orphanage. The orphanage is run by a Dr Wilbur Larch who trains young Homer to become an obstetrician. After Larch’s death, Homer Wells returns to the orphanage to become the new director. Melony also grew up in the orphanage and was Homer’s 1st girlfriend. She becomes an electrician. The Cider House Rules was adapted for film in 1999 and stars Tobey Maguire as Homer Wells and Michael Caine as Wilbur Larch. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Turn: An Autobiography Norman Wisdom 2003 My Turn. Memoirs by Norman Wisdom With William Hall. The story of Norman Wisdom who was in foster care as a child and as a 14 year old was working as a cabin boy on a cargo ship heading to Argentina. Norman Wisdom's early years could easily have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Left by their frightened mother, ill-treated by a brutal father, Norman and his brother were forced to fend for themselves, sleeping rough in London and stealing food to survive. (William Hall, who assisted Norman Wisdom in the writing of his life story, is a biographer, broadcaster and critic. He is the author of more than a dozen biographies, including Michael Caine, James Dean, Frankie Howerd, Larry Adler and Dick Emery.) External Website

Radio & Podcast Anton Clifford-Motopi on finding his full name Conversations (Anton Clifford-Motopi) 2024 In this podcast, Anton Clifford-Motopi recounts what it was like growing up in his large, caring, adoptive family in the seaside town of Redcliff in Queensland, Australia. While at home Anton felt as if he belonged, at school he felt out of place, different. This was because he looked different, especially as he had “weird, fuzzy hair.” As a teenager, Anton was told his father was a Torres Strait Islander. Decades later he found out his father lived 12,000km away in a small African country. Anton Clifford-Motopi has recently published his debut children’s novel “To and Fro” about a 12 year old boy, Sam, who thinks he’s weird looking. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Memoirs of a Survivor Doris Lessing 1974 The Memoirs of a Survivor is a dystopian novel. A future modern city is falling apart and there are gangs of people trying to survive in the face of food shortages and swarms of rats. An unnamed narrator—middle-aged, well-educated—is watching this from inside her flat. One day a 12 year old girl, Emily Cartright, is left with her. Where the narrator is considering migrating too, now she feels compelled to stay. As she takes the task of caring for Emily seriously, Emily also provides the opportunity for the narrator to reflect on her own childhood and adolescence. In effect, the narrator comes to mother herself. Aside from Emily, there’s a home for other children in the story, a home where Emily spends considerable time caring for children whose parents have died or abandoned them. Gerald—likely modelled on Roger Diski, Jenny’s one time husband—a young man in his early 20s, has set this up External Website