Autobiography/Memoir But We All Shine On The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children’s Home by Paolo Hewitt Paolo Hewitt 2014 But We All Shine On is an inspiring account of Paolo Hewitt’s journey to reconnect with childhood friends from Burbank Children’s Home. Their remarkable stories reveal resilience and the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity. Meet Des, who reinvented himself; Norman, the runaway who crossed a continent; David, the boy who struggled to be heard; and Terry, the enigmatic child who stood in a school field for four days. Through their struggles and triumphs, Paolo uncovers profound truths about care, himself, and the enduring strength of children. Gripping and honest, this book is a moving tribute to the power of hope and survival, a worthy companion to Hewitt’s classic memoir The Looked After Kid. External Website

Writers Doreen Kartinyeri Doreen Kartinyeri, a Ngarrindjeri woman, (1935-2007) was born at the Point McLeay Aboriginal Mission Station. After her mother died she was sent to a Salvation Army Home in suburban Adelaide, from which she was expelled in 1949. Doreen was then sent to work as a domestic servant by the Aboriginal Protection Board. She returned to Point McLeay in 1950 to care for her grandmother and cousins. After she married Terry Wanganeen in 1954, Doreen and Terry lived on the Point Pearce Aboriginal Station on the Yorke Peninsula and Doreen began collecting the histories of Aboriginal families of both Point McLeay and Pearce. She worked as a genealogist at the University of Adelaide fromf 1979 and from 1983 began publishing genealogies of Aboriginal families. Ngarrinderi Nation (2006) was the final genealogic book published by Doreen Kartinyeri. It contains a genealogy of the Aboriginal families descended from the Ngarrinderi people of South Australia. Her memoir, My Ngarrindjeri Calling, was published in 2008. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Tracker Alexis Wright 2017 Stolen Generations legendary figure, Tracker Tilmouth, is the subject of this collective biography by award-winning writer, Alexis Wright. Alexis Wright used an Aboriginal way of storytelling, allowing others she interviewed to have their own say in the biography. Tracker Tilmouth (1954-2015) grew up on the Croker Island Mission from the age of 4 until he went to high school in Darwin, Northern Territory. In Darwin he was moved around between residential facilities and foster care. After he got his Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree in 1991, he worked for the Central Land Council supporting Aboriginal Australians who run cattle stations. External Website

Children's Fiction Peter Pan in Kensington Garden J M Barrie 1977 The story of Peter Pan had its genesis in the 1902 novel "the Little White Bird", the central chapters of which tell of a child "who escaped from being a human when he was seven days old and flew back to Kensington Gardens". Barrie developed this story both into a play (first performed in 1904 but not published until 1928) and this book of 1906. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Crazy Diamonds Rosie Canning 2015 But We All Shine On The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children’s Home by Paolo Hewitt. Paolo represents his care leavers as unique people, as successes, as people with such depth and humanity that the words slice into their broken childhoods and create alchemical healing and wholeness. His characters share their stories, each one a hero; finding love, finding peace, finding themselves. And in amongst the chaos, is that diamond, Paolo himself, sharing his memories about his brothers, sharing his sadness and humour, sharing his insights into his own life and his own difficulties – made just a little easier by his relationship with God. He is a seasoned writer, having written over twenty books, spanning music, fashion, sport and memoir. All his loves are interwoven into the musical score of this hard rock homelife, that flutuates with melodic yearnings and a creates an unforgettable refrain. External Website

Television Shows The Valhalla Murders 2019 The Valhalla murders is based on a true story, of a state run institution in Iceland which housed young boys between 7 and 14 years of age, many of whom were abused by staff. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Nowhere Child Christian White 2018 The Nowhere Child (2018) is Australian writer Christian White's award winning debut novel. At the centre of the story is Melbourne woman and photographer, Kimberly Leamy, who at the opening of the story is told that she is Sammy Went, a child who was kidnapped 28 years earlier. Kimberly travels to the US to solve the mystery of why she ended up in Melbourne and along the way encounters snake wielding religious fantatics. External Website

Radio & Podcast Frederick Douglas You're Dead to Me (3) A discussion about the 19th century abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved but who escaped to New York and became a preacher and writer. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Lilian Bader: The First Black Woman to join the RAF Lillian Bader 2018 Lilian Bailey b.18 Feb 1918 d.13 Mar 2015 (aged 97) Liverpool, England. In 1927, Bader and her two brothers were orphaned when their father died. At the age of 9 she was separated from her brothers and placed in a convent, where she remained until she was 20 because no one would employ her because of racism. In 1939, at the onset of the Second World War, Bader enlisted in the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) at Catterick Camp, When it was discovered that her father was not born in the United Kingdom, she was dismissed. On 28 March 1941, she enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), after she heard that the Royal Air Force (RAF) were taking citizens of West Indian descent. She trained in instrument repair, which was a trade newly opened to women. She then became a Leading Aircraft Woman and was eventually promoted to the rank of corporal. External Website

Artists Al's Art Alan Dapré (born 1965) studied Creative Arts (BA Hons) in Nottingham. He is a British writer who has successfully written for television, radio and publishers for over 20 years as well as writing he also produces art. "Alan Dapré has written 60 books for children & over 100 scripts for children’s TV. His plays have been on BBC Radio 4 and published for use in schools worldwide."I spent my early years in foster homes and care institutions. Most of the things I carried around on my travels were left behind at some point. In one children’s home, I carefully chained my 1970’s second-hand Chopper bike inside a dark coal shed. Then I was dispatched on yet another fostering. When I returned I discovered the front wheel was still chained up. Just the front wheel, mind. The rest had gone. It was never wise to leave things behind. It’s hard to settle down when life is so turbulent. It’s hard to have privacy, especially when you share a room with other children. I remember being given a metal torch for my seventh birthday and sneakily reading under the bedcovers. It made a change from staring at passing headlights out of a window. I’d gaze out and imagine myself being carried away to a real home where I would be surrounded by books and toys and love." External Website

Non Fiction We Were Once a Family Roxanna Asgarian 2023 We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death and Child Removal in America (2023) by investigative journalist, Roxanna Asgarian, is the harrowing story of a murder-suicide. In 2018, a white married couple drove their car over a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 2 women had adopted 6 African American children, 3 siblings each from 2 families. 5 of those children were now dead, and 1 was missing. Asgarian centres the birth families of the dead children and uncovers a disturbing system of racial bias when removing children and a lack of knowledge about prospective adoptive parents. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The House in the Cerulean Sea TJ Klune 2021 The House in the Cerulean Sea, Klune's first stand-alone novel published with the Macmillan Tor imprint, was partially inspired by the Sixties Scoop, where the Canadian government removed Indigenous children from their homes and placed them with unrelated white, middle-class families. Seeing the similarities of this event take place in the current-day Southern United States, Klune felt a need to write a story celebrating children's differences and to show the positive effects of giving children a safe and supportive place to be themselves. Linus Baker is a 40-year-old man who lives with his devious cat Calliope, and who works as a case-worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). He spends his work days overseeing the care of magical children in orphanages, and his nights listening to his old records. When Extremely Upper Management calls him, he is given a Classified Level 4 (he had only been given a Classified Level 3 once, which was an unfortunate incident), in what will probably be his most challenging task ever; taking a trip to the Marsyas Orphanage, where six extraordinary children are kept by an equally extraordinary caretaker, Arthur Parnassus. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles FamilyConnect Family 2023 FamilyConnect helps adults who have been adopted or in care find answers to questions about their origins. Finding out about your background and family members can help you understand inherited health risks, make important life choices and understand more about why you were separated from your birth family. Lots of people aren’t aware of their legal rights when accessing their birth and care records, or what they can expect to receive and how to go about searching for information in the first place. Family Action’s FamilyConnect website helps people explore these issues, providing information, guidance, support and signposting to help. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Orphaned by the Colour of My Skin: A Stolen Generation Story by Mary Terszak Mary Terszak 2008 Orphaned by the Colour of My Skin (2008) by Mary Terszak weaves together auto-ethnography and archival evidence to tell the story of Terszak's removal from her family at the age of 2 in the context of the broader history of Aboriginal 'protection' in Australia. Terszak uses herself as a case study and includes a comparison of her situation with that of non-Aboriginal children who were also removed from families and institutionalised. External Website

Television Shows Winter 2015 Winter is a 6 episode Australian mystery-drama-thriller television that has a foster character at the heart of the story. Detective Sergeant Eve Winter leads the task force assigned to investigate the murder of young mother Karly Johansson at Rocky Point. On the same night a young girl Indiana is hit by a car in Kings Cross. It transpires Indi and Karly knew each other some years back when Indi was fostered by Karly's family. Although the screenplay and acting are good, Indi however is described as toubled as well as her past involving drink, drugs and prostitution - a typical care experience stereotype. The foster story is key to the plot. External Website

Performing Arts Puppeteer Marcus Clarke Marcus Clarke was born in Forest Gate, East London. He spent several years in Canada, Care and in NCH orphanages before being settled in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire where he left West Bridgford School, his local comprehensive school with no qualifications. After a series of jobs behind the scenes in theatres, he became stage manager in a West End production of Little Shop Of Horrors, where he looked after Audrey II – the giant plant. He became interested in the art of puppetry. Clarke went on to audition for Jim Henson's TV Puppeteering Workshop. Inspired in part by Henson, he and his partner, Helena Smee, formed a puppet creation company, "Hands Up Puppets", in 1986. To date, they have created more than 60 puppets and worked as puppeteers on a similar number of UK television series. External Website

Writers Paul Fronczak American Paul Froncazk found out when he was 10 that in 1964 as a baby he'd been abducted from the hospital. 2 years later a baby was abandoned on a street corner and everyone assumed that was baby Paul and he was 'returned' to his parents. Except Paul wasn't Paul. And he didn't find that out until 2015 through a DNA test. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Likes of Us G. V. Holmes, 1948 G. V. Holmes’—or Girls’ Village Homes—was the pseudonym of the author of The Likes of Us, which was published in 1948. External Website

Radio & Podcast Baroness Lola Young: From foster care to the House of Lords Full Disclosure with James O'Brien 2024 On 29 November 2024, James O’Brien interviewed Baroness Lola Young on his Full Disclosure podcast. Lola Young was in foster care as a child and she talks about this – about being different because in care – with James as well as about her adulthood in social work, acting, academia and politics. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Billy Connolly: ‘I’ve been scared my whole life’ Billy Connolly 2021 Billy Connolly: ‘I’ve been scared my whole life’ The comedian recalls his early years in an exclusive extract from his new autobiography. "When I was told I was going to live with my aunts and my Uncle James, I was delighted. The children’s home scared me. Everything scared me after my mother left. And I’ve gone on being scared my whole life.” Billy Connolly on the impact care can have. External Website