Television Shows Dickensian 2015 Dickensian is a British drama which brings many of Charles Dickens' characters - including those who are Care Experienced - together in the one Victorian neighborhood as a murder is being investigated. External Website

Films/Videos Resistance 2020 Resistance was inspired by French actor Marcel Marceu's work during WWII taking orphaned Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied France. It is said that he was directly involved in the safe removal of 100s of children and that 1000s were saved. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Mothering Sunday (book) Graham Swift 2016 From the Booker Award winner: a luminous, profoundly moving work of fiction that begins with an afternoon tryst in 1924 between a servant girl and the young man of the neighboring house, but then opens to reveal the whole life of a remarkable woman. Twenty-two-year-old Jane Fairchild, orphaned at birth, has worked as a maid at one English country estate since she was sixteen. And for almost all of those years she has been the secret lover to Paul Sheringham, the scion of the estate next door. On an unseasonably warm March afternoon, Jane and Paul will make love for the last time--though not, as Jane believes, because Paul is about to be married--and the events of the day will alter Jane's life forever. As the narrative moves back and forth from 1924 to the end of the century, what we know and understand about Jane--about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, remembers--deepens with every beautifully wrought moment. External Website

Activists Black and In Care David Akinsanya 2024 Not long after leaving youth custody, David got involved with a group called Black and In Care. He helped make a powerful video about the experiences of youngsters in the system. The film was used to train social workers and to raise important issues. He often showed the film and watched people come to more understanding just by hearing the lived experiences. David continued his activism and became a researcher for TV, his proudest moment was the making of “Find me a family” which addressed the need to find people to adopt older kids and siblings. He can be found on Twitter @DavidAkinsanya External Website

Children's Fiction We Are Wolves Katrina Nannestad 2021 We Are Wolves (2021) by Australian children's writer, Katrina Nannestad, is the extraordinary story of 3 children left to fend for themselves at the end of WWII. The story begins in October 1944 in East Prussia. The children's father has been constricted but soon the Russian army breaks through the German lines and the rest of the family - 11 year old Liesl, 7 year old Otto, and toddler Mia plus their mother and grandparents abandon the farm. It's not long before the children are on their own and having a range of 'adventures' including meeting up with other orphaned German children known as "wolf children". External Website

Radio & Podcast The floating hell of prison hulks History Extra Podcast 2022 The focus in this podcast are the 'prison hulks' or floating prisons used by the British to 'house' convicts during the 18th and 19th centuries. Former navy ships were docked on the Thames (and at other locations) and male convicts were kept on board until they were transported elsewhere in the empire, including Australia. Boys as young as 8 were kept on board prison hulks, called 'rotten leaky tubs' by reformers. External Website

Writers Patricia Highsmith 1921-1995 Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas. She was an only child, her parents divorced ten days before their daughter's birth. In 1927, Highsmith, her mother and her adoptive stepfather, artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924, moved to New York City. When she was 12 years old, Highsmith was in kinship care, sent to Fort Worth and lived with her grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt "abandoned" by her mother. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley who was orphaned at 5 years old and in kinship care, raised by cold-hearted aunt Dottie, who mocked him as a "sissy"; has been adapted numerous times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan", Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film. External Website

Television Shows Pennyworth 2019 Pennyworth (2019) is an American television series exploring the pre-Gotham life of Bruce Wayne’s guardian and butler, Alfred Pennyworth Pennyworth (Jack Bannon) is a former British soldier, a member of the SAS, who sets up his own security company in post-WWII London. Bruce Wayne isn't around yet, but Martha and Thomas Wayne do have a child, a daughter Samantha. There’s also a foundling, Katie Browning (Jessye Romeo) in Series 2 who is close to the sadistic sociopath, Bet Sykes (Saloma Faith). And there's the orphaned baby Bet 'adopts' after she kills the baby's mother, Miss Dixon (Sally Tatum). External Website

Films/Videos Foster Care Films - Community Engagement Project 2018 A series of documentary films, currently in production, these films gives a voice to youth in the system. An opportunity for foster youth to share their voice thru storytelling, writing and art An outlet for foster youth to work behind the scenes on a film A social media campaign focused on reframing the discussion about foster care A community engagement project, which connects current/former foster youth to those who have an opportunity to make a difference within the system. External Website

Television Shows Bodies 2023 Bodies is based on the eponymous 2015 graphic novel written by Si Spencer (1961-2021). It is a police procedural “with a twist”. The twist is that the same body is found on Longharvest Lane, Whitechapel, London in 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053. The death is investigated by 4 different detectives. At the heart of the time-travelling strangeness is Stephen Graham as Sir Julian Harker in 1890 and 1941, and Commander Mannix in 2053. A great-great grandchild of Harker’s is Elias Mannix (as a 15-year-old played by Gabriel Howell) who is also his own great-great grandchild. Elias is born in 2008, taken into care at age 4, and later adopted. In 2023 he blows up London and becomes authoritarian Commander Mannix. External Website

Radio & Podcast A Reading Life, A Writing Life A Reading Life, A Writing Life 2022 Sally Bayley is a writer and Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford, England Sally was so neglected at home as a child that she put herself into the care system at the age of 14. She didn't see her family for the next 12 years. Sally now lives on a boat on the River Thames in Oxford. In this podcast she talks about living on the river and amongst nature, and about her reading and writing life. External Website

Television Shows Unorthodox 2020 Unorthodox is a German-American Netflix series inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Esty, a 19 year old woman who grew up in kinship care, escapes from her ultra orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, to Berlin, Germany but is chased by her husband. External Website

Writers AUTHORS I External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Jane Austen at Home: A Biography Lucy Worsley 2018 In this biography, we find out that Jane Austen (1775-1817) was in foster care as a small child. Cassandra Austen apparently weaned her babies as soon as possible and then sent them to a foster mother (probably a Mrs Littleworth) who cared for them until they were walking and talking. The children’s parents visited the children daily, and sometimes the infants returned to the rectory for a visit too. But their home was in foster care. Lucy Worsley argues there were benefits to this arrangement in that all the children survived. However, the bonds between the children and their mother were weakened so much that her children barely noticed when Mrs Austen was absent from the rectory. Because Jane Austen also went to boarding school, Worsley estimates she spent nearly 5 of her first 11 years away from home. There are other Care Experienced family members too, as Jane Austen’s father was an orphan, her brother George lived in foster care all his childhood, and her brother Edward was adopted by the Knight family when he was 16. External Website

Films/Videos The Truman Show 1998 The Truman Show is a 1998 American psychological comedy-drama film starring Jim Carrey. Selected at birth and legally adopted by a television studio, Truman Burbank’s life is orchestrated from birth without his consent: and raised within a completely artificial environment. Truman lives his entire life as the unwitting star of a massive reality television show. Truman is constantly monitored by hidden cameras, his movements and relationships controlled for others’ entertainment. External Website

Children's Fiction The Leftovers Eleanor Spence 1983 When the home in which they've been living is about to be closed down to make way for a new road, four foster children write an advertisement for a real home with a proper family External Website

Performing Arts Bandmaster and academic Charles Nalden Charles Nalden CBE (1908-2002) was born John Leslie Simpson. He was renamed when he was taken to the London Foundling Hospital at the age of 29 days. When he was 14 he went into the British Army, becoming the bandmaster. After 25 years in the army, Charles Nalden arrived in Auckland, New Zealand and became an academic at the University of Auckland. He became a professor in 1956, and professor emeritus on his retirement in 1974. Charles Nalden was also a conductor and writer about music. In the 1976 Birthday Honours, Nalden was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to music. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Call Me Auntie: My Childhood in Care and My Search for My Mother Anne Harrison 2020 A truly original story of life in and after care. The author's own account of being left behind by her mother as a one year old and her life in foster homes and institutions. When eventually traced, 'Call Me Auntie' was the best her mother could offer, but this was just the start of a bizarre sequence of events. Call Me Auntie is a telling account of abandonment, 'Heartbreak House' care homes, family history and survival. It is also one of resilience and personal achievement as the author discovered she also had a brother left behind in the same way, forged a professional career, searched for her long lost relatives in Barbados and eventually came to understand that she 'may be a princess after all'. External Website

Authors W Chris Wild: Activist and Campaigner ➝ Indigo Willing: Advocate for Vietnames adoptees ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Paperback) Gabrielle Zevin 2023 A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and his prized possession - a rare first edition book has been stolen. Over time, he has given up on people, and even the books in his store, instead of offering solace, are yet another reminder of a world that is changing too rapidly. But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life - and Maya's - is changed forever. External Website