Performing Arts Writer Charles Ignatius Sancho Charles Ignatius Sancho (c1729-1780) was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic After he was orphaned at the age 2 he was taken from New Granada to England where he was "gifted" to 3 sisters. He stayed with the sisters for 18 years, but then ran away, not wanting to be a servant. Sancho was taken in by John Montagu who taught the young man to read. He worked as a butler in the household before leaving to set up in business as a shopkeeper. while beginning a career as a writer. He became involved in the abolitionist movement and wrote to Laurence Sterne, trying to encourage him to join the movement. He wrote 2 plays, a variety of essays, and at least one book, A Theory of Music. Sancho also wrote at least 62 compositions, printed in 4 collections between around 1767 and 1779. External Website

Films/Videos Enola Holmes 2 2022 Enola Homles 2 (2022) is another film based on The Enola Holmes Mysteries by American writer Nancy Springer. In the 1st film, Enola Holmes ends up in the kinship care of Mycroft Holmes. In this one, she is a ward of Sherlock Holmes. Enola has started up her own private detective agency, and is about to close it when she is asked by an orphaned girl, Bessie, to find Bessie's sister, Sarah Chapman. Bessie has been living with the older Sarah, but they are not biological sisters. At the centre of the story is a match factory where girls and women are dying because of the phosphorus being used. A strike at the factory is a fictionalised version of an actual 1888 strike by women and girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow, London. External Website

Films/Videos The Beautiful Game 2024 The Beautiful Game (2024) is a British sports drama. Inspired by the Homeless World Cupper Soccer Tournament, the film tells the story of the English team of homeless footballers going to Rome to play in the competition. In the English team, there is one young man who was in mulitple ‘care’ homes as a child, and another whose son is now in foster care because of his negligence. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lamb Bernard MacLaverty 1980 Bernard MacLaverty’s Lamb (1980) begins in Home for boys run by christian brothers. One of the youngest brothers, Michael Lamb, is horrified by the place and when he inherits a small amount of money, he leaves, taking with him 12-year-old Owen Kane. Michael and Owen pose as father and son until the money runs out. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Foundlings Anna Spargo-Ryan 2022 Foundlings is a work-in-progress. Following the lives of two women who hoped for more, it’s historical fiction set in the Adelaide Destitute Asylum on the cusp of women’s suffrage legislation in the late nineteenth century. Anna also has a short story called Foundling in The Saturday Paper (16 July 2022) which is behind a paywall. External Website

Television Shows Trying 2020 Trying (2020-2024) is a British comedy series following a couple, Nikki (Esther Smith) & Jason (Rafe Spall), who decide to adopt a child. Nikki & Jason are seen trying to impress adoption agency workers, members of an adoption support group, an adoption panel, etc. In Season 3 of Trying, Nikki & Jason formally adopt Princess and her younger brother Tyler. In Season 4, the series skips ahead 6 years. Now 16, Princess (Scarlett Rayner) wants to know about her birth family and why she and her brother Tyler (now 12, played by Cooper Turner) were given up for adoption. External Website

Radio & Podcast A free lunch Life Changing with Jane Garvey 2022 This is a conversation with Sinead Browne who grew up in the UK care system. She ended up with an eating disorder and a law degree, went travelling at the age of 27 and was inspired by The Free Store https://www.thefreestore.org.nz/ in New Zealand to set up Compliments of the House back in the UK, in Brixton. Compliments of the House provides food and community for those who need it, and can be found here: https://www.complimentsofthehouse.org/ and Sinead's website is here: https://www.sineadbrowne.com/ External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Safer Compared to What? The Imprint 2025 Safer Compared to What? (2025) is a December 2025 published in The Imprint. Writer Richard Wexler explores findings from a recent Swedish study that “followed children in more than 21,000 cases of child abuse or neglect allegations”. Some of the sample children were in foster care, the others remained in their families of origin. The study found though… “…the two groups were no worse off to begin with, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to have died than the children allowed to stay with their families.” The lead researcher found the results “staggering”. According to Wexler, there are other studies (included in the article) which show that “family separation” is “inherently harmful”, that so often foster children do worse than those left with their families. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Tuesday Thing Kate Shayler 2004 The heartwarming sequel to The Long Way Home. A Tuesday Thing starts with a young adult Kate striving to be accepted as normal among her peers. Lacking the confidence, her dreams and expectations of ever becoming a member of a real family seem to evaporate. She starts an early childhood course at university but just as her teaching career brings her joy and new challenges, the dark secrets from her past resurface and Kate must face her demons - particularly the father who robbed her of a childhood but at the same time never stopped loving her. External Website

Television Shows Shadow and Bone 2021 Alina Starkov grew up in an orphanage. After she grows up and becomes a soldier, she discovers that she can "summon the light", an ability that means some powerful people take an interest in her. The fantasy series is based on Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse books and the world of Ravka. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Scars Remain: A Long History of Forgotten Australians and Children's Institutions Nell Musgrove 2013 The Scars Remain presents the long history of placing Australian children in institutions, putting a human face on child welfare systems which have, over the course of more than two hundred years, touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of children as well as their families and friends. It explains how institutions which claimed to care for children could do greater harm than good, and challenges the mythology of egalitarianism which often shapes Australian histories. External Website

Academic Articles From Hagiography to Personal Pain: Stories of Australian foster care from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century Dee Michell 2017 Stories - fictional, biographical, and autobiographical - are one way in which we can imagine what it has been like to experience foster care in Australia. In this paper Dee Michell looks at the trends in stories told about foster care from the nineteenth century, across the twentieth, and into the early twenty-first century. While exploring these trends, Michell makes some observations about the shift from fictional accounts where foster parents and foster children were heroic characters to often searing tales of hurt and trauma inflicted on children in foster care by violent women and men. External Website

Films/Videos Sunshine Christmas 1977 Sunshine Christmas (1977) A musician, brooding over the marriage of his sometime girlfriend, decides to take his adopted daughter home to Texas to celebrate Christmas with his family. While there, he begins to rekindle the relationship he once had with his childhood girlfriend. External Website

Television Shows Sherlock 2010 In the British series Sherlock (2010-2017) starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, there are 3 episodes featuring adults who were displaced as children. In Season 1, Episode 2 Sherlock Holms (Cumberbatch) and John Watson (Freeman) investigate who is using an ancient Chinese numbering system as part of a smuggling operation. Chinese twins, orphaned as children, have been involved in a criminal gang. One of them is has since left. In Season 2, Episode 2, 27-year-old Henry Knight says he was orphaned 20 yrs previously; he saw his father being torn to pieces by a monstrously large creature. Sherlock & Watson are investigating because Henry Knight thinks the local government research station is breeding strange & monstrous creatures. In Season 4, Episode 2 we learn that Sherlock & Mycroft have a sister who was institutionalized as a child because she had killed Sherlock’s dog and set the family home on fire. Sherlock has no memories of his sister. Mycroft reveals the woman is still institutionalised, now in a maximum-security facility in the North Sea. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lord of the Flies (novel) William Golding 1954 Lord of the Flies (1954) is the debut novel of British writer William Golding. In the midst of war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britian is shot down over a deserted tropical island. At first, the displaced boys, separated from family, enjoy their life without adult supervision. They divide themselves into the ‘littluns’ – boys around the age of 6, and the ‘biguns’, those between 10 & 12. Ralph is elected the leader – he represents order and democracy. Jack wants to be leader and draws other boys away from Ralph’s influence. He becomes increasingly aggressive and interested in hunting, and some of the boys follow his lead. The boys break into two groups, one led by Ralph and one by Jack. The boys' appetite for blood leads them to hunting humans... Another central character in the novel is Piggy who is an orphan & living in kinship care with his aunt before the crash. Piggy has asthma & wears thick glasses; he is often mocked by the other boys. Yet Piggy is the most intellectual of the boys. External Website

Authors A Entitlement ➝ Other Women ➝ The Children's Train (novel) ➝ The Clan of the Cave Bear: The bestselling sweeping historical romance (Earth's Children) ➝ The Inheritance ➝ The Death of Dora Black ➝ The Bee and the Orange Tree ➝ Mansfield Park ➝ Celestial Bodies ➝ Murder on North Terrace ➝ Robert B. Parker's Lullaby ➝ They Do it with Mirrors (novel) ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows The Iris Affair 2025 The Iris Affair (2025) is a British thriller created by Neil Cross. Iris Nixon (Niamh Algar), a gifted puzzle solver, is recruited by the charismatic Cameron Beck (Tom Hollander) to help unlock a powerful technology. Realizing its dangerous potential, she steals the activation sequence and goes on the run, with Beck leading the relentless pursuit to find her. While she is on the run, Iris Nixon takes on a job as tutor for teenage Joy Baxter (Mereana Tomlinson). Joy Baxter gets caught up in the pursuit to catch Iris, even being abducted at one point. Joy Baxter is not living with her parents, she is living with guardians. Why Joy is with guardians instead of parents, however, is not explained in the series. External Website

Authors S Writer ➝ Poet, musician, and author ➝ Australian, opera singer ➝ Composer ➝ British singer-songwriter ➝ Blues singer ➝ Singer-musician ➝ Judee Sill ➝ British author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian, and columnist ➝ Back to Top

Actors Jack Thompson Born 31 August 1940, John Hadley Pain in Manly, a suburb of Sydney, Thompson was five years old when his mother died, leaving his father, a merchant seaman, unable to care for him and his brother, David. He was sent to an orphanage by his aunt and subsequently adopted by the poet and ABC broadcaster John Thompson and his wife Pat, after which he changed his surname. ack attended Sydney Boys High for his secondary education but left at the age of 14. He became a jackaroo on a cattle station in the Northern Territory for a number of years, later taking up other working-class jobs such as working on the railways. It was while he was attending Queensland University from 1966 that Jack became involved in drama, and started auditioning for television shows. Jack Thompson has been a significant figure in the Australian film industry for more than 60 years. He has had leading roles in iconic Australian films and various awards. External Website

Films/Videos Foster Boy 2020 Foster Boy is a 2019 American drama film. Michael is a high-powered lawyer and Jamal is an angry young man who has been imprisoned after years of abuse in the foster care system. Together they have to overcome their differences to find justice and expose the foster care system. Directed by Youssef Delara and starring Shane Paul McGhie, Matthew Modine and Louis Gossett Jr. External Website