Fiction featuring Care Experience The Broken Shore Peter Temple 2005 Before the Jimmy Savile scandal broke, South African born Australian writer, Peter Temple, tells an eerily similar (fictional) story in the award-winning The Broken Shore (2005) Detective Cashin is investigating the murder of a prominent philanthropist and discovers the well regarded old man ran a charitable organisation to provide a cover for a group of paedophiles - including himself. The misnamed 'Moral Companions' would organise camps for boys in foster care and children's homes to give them "a bit of fun" (Temple, 320). External Website

Authors R Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie ➝ Nancy Reagan ➝ Jean-Jacques Rousseau ➝ Jill Roe ➝ Jean Rhys ➝ Richard Rhodes ➝ Eleanor Roosevelt ➝ Bertrand Russell ➝ Back to Top

Authors I Slipped Through the Net. The story of Melrose Desmond Donley ➝ Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography ➝ Back to Top

Authors A Kriss Akabusi ➝ Dele Alli ➝ Back to Top

Artists Angel De Cora Angel De Cora (1871–1919) artist of the Winnebago people, forcibly taken from her family as a child by US authorities as part of a programme to assimilate Native American girls into white society. De Cora later became a Native American rights advocate. Also known by her American Indian Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka (Fleecy Cloud Floating in Place), was born at the Winnebago Agency in Dakota County (now Thurston), Nebraska. Angel was kidnapped at a young age from the agency and sent to a school at the Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School in Hampton, Virginia. She described how: "A strange white man appeared on the reservation and asked her, through an interpreter, if she would like to ride on a steam car; with six other children, she decided to try it, and when the ride was ended she found herself in Hampton. 'It was three years later that she returned to her mother who had wept and mourned for her. External Website

Films/Videos Mao's Last Dancer 2009 Mao's Last Dancer (2009) is an Australian film which tells the story of Chinese born Australian ballet dancer, Li Cunxin. When he was 11 and living in Shandong Province with his family, Li Cunxin was selected to leave his family and train in a Beijing dance academy for 7 years. After spending some time with the Houston Ballet as an exchange student, Li defects to the United States. In 1995, Li Cunxin moved to Australia with his Australian-born wife, Mary McKendry and became a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience All the Murmuring Bones Angela Slatter 2021 Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family... External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Fathers' Daughter: A Story of Family and Belonging Hannah Pool 2009 In 2004, Guardian beauty editor Hannah Pool was living a glamorous London life, knowing more about lipstick trends than about Eritrea, the war-torn country of her birth, and feeling complete within her white, English adoptive family. When she was unexpectedly contacted by relatives she never knew existed, she decided to return to Africa to confront the questions every adopted child asks about identity, loss, and belonging. My Fathers’ Daughter traces her brave and emotionally charged journey to Eritrea, where she encounters the family she lost and the father she believed dead, External Website

Performing Arts Singer, songwriter, guitarist Ruby Hunter Ruby Charlotte Margaret Hunter (31 October 1955 – 17 February 2010) was an Aboriginal Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist. A member of the Stolen Generations and a proud Ngarrindjeri woman, Ruby was born in the Coorong region of South Australia. At eight years of age Ruby was removed from her family along with four siblings. Initially deposited in the Seaforth Children’s Home, for the next eight years Ruby was in and out of foster care and other institutions. At 16 Ruby was released from state control. While she was homeless on the streets of Adelaide, Ruby met Archie Roach at a Salvation Army drop in centre. The couple struggled with alcohol addiction but Ruby encouraged Archie to begin transmuting his pain into songs. After Ruby and Archie moved to Melbourne, Ruby worked for the Margaret Tucker Hostel for Girls which provides accommodation for homeless Aboriginal girls. The hostel is named after one of Australia’s distinguished Aboriginal activists. Ruby continued this work with Archie when the couple cared for children in a group home and later as they cared for young people in their own home. In 1994 Ruby Hunter became the first Aboriginal Australian woman to record with a major label with her first album, Thoughts Within. 6 years later she won Best Female Performer at the 2000 Deadly Awards. Ruby Hunter also performed in the 2001 film, One Night the Moon, starring Paul Kelly and directed by Rachel Perkins. Ruby’s Story was a 2004 collaboration between Ruby, Archie Roach, Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra using songs to tell Ruby’s story and performed at the Message Stick Festival. Ruby Hunter performed with Archie Roach in Melbourne’s Federal Square for the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generation given by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. She always maintained that keeping her family together was her biggest achievement. External Website

Films/Videos The Changeling (1980) 1980 The Changeling was a 1980 Canadian horror film. After the tragic death of his wife and daughter, a music professor, John Russell (played by George C Scott) is staying at a Seattle mansion and becomes involved in an old mystery. Investigating the history of his house (which seems to be haunted), John finds out that a boy was murdered there in 1906 by his father. The father then replaced the dead boy with one from an orphanage, then took the lad off to Europe claiming to be seeking a cure for his son’s illness. The adopted boy is now an old man, a US Senator, and patron of the historical society which owns the house where John Russell is living. External Website

Performing Arts Singer, comedienne, activist Eartha Kitt Eartha Kitt (1927 – 2008) was an American singer, actress, dancer, voice actress, comedienne, activist, author, and songwriter. Eartha Mae Kitt was born in North, a small town in Orangeburg County, South Carolina. Her mother was of African and Cherokee heritage and her unknown father is believed to have been a white man. When she was around 3 or 4 years of age, Eartha was rejected by her mother and sent to live in foster care. Four years later, Eartha was sent to live in Harlem, New York, with an aunt, who was also abusive. Eartha Kitt’s professional career began with her dancing but quickly moved into acting and singing too. Kitt made her acting debut in 1950; she played Helen of Troy in an Orson Welles’ production. She then went on to perform in film and television, including the role of Catwoman in the 1960s series of Batman. Her outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War led to Kitt being blacklisted in the United States. Her career took off again 10 years later with her 1978 performance in the musical Timbuktu! Eartha Kitt continued to perform in nightclubs and for films—and record songs—until her death. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Yellow Papers Dominque Wilson 2014 The Yellow Papers (2014) is a novel by Australian writer Dominique Wilson which is bookended by the stories of care experienced characters. At age 7 Chen Mu is sent from China to the US to study. 9 years later, Chen Mu, now a keen botanist, makes his way - accidentally - to Australia.r 20 years. The story concludes with Huang Ho, who lives for a while with his grandmother in Hong Kong before she sends him to university in Adelaide, South Australia. Being a keen follower of Mao Zedong (1893-1976), he is anxious to get back to China. In between are the stories of other Australian and Chinese nationals who become friends across a vast historical sweep of time. External Website

Children's Fiction Jamberoo Road Eleanor Roberts Spence et al. 1969 Five years ago, in 1825, Missabella and her ten orphans—the “Switherby Pilgrims”—had voyaged from England to New South Wales, in primitive Australia. Missabella, now, is determined to provide for the future of her orphans according to each one’s character. Not an easy task, with such a varied, ragtag, yet lovable set of personalities and backgrounds as they represent. Selina will train in Sydney to be a milliner; Paul may become a midshipman; Francis loves to farm. But what will satisfy clever, independent Cassie, who has ambitions to be a writer? The “Jamberoo Road” leads her inland, to the discomforts and enticements of being governess in a wealthy colonial family. Cassie’s story, interwoven with that of all the other orphans’ and their former farmhand Eben’s, is both an account of personal growth and a vivid journey into early-day Australia. External Website

Television Shows Decline and Fall 2017 Decline and Fall (2017) is British comedy series based on the 1928 epynomous novel by Evelyn Waugh, Paul Pennyfeather is 'sent down' or expelled from Oxford unjustly. Because his guardian won't give him access to his inheritance, he has to make a living as a teacher at an obscure boarding school in Wales. The affable, kind and naive young man falls in love with a woman who traffics women. Because she is enormously wealthy, she is popular and 'respectable.' External Website

Television Shows The Gloaming 2020 Australian television series which features a story line of children in foster care and which has a Senior Detective who has been in foster care as a child. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Glasgow Boys Margaret McDonald 2024 Winner of the 2025 Carnegie Medal 2025 Two boys can't remember the last time they had a hug. Meet Finlay. He's studying for his nursing degree at Glasgow University, against all the odds. But coming straight from care means he has no support network. How can he write essays, find paid work and NOT fall for the beautiful boy at uni, when he's struggling to even feed himself? Meet Banjo. He's trying to settle in with his new foster family and finish high school. But he can't forget all that has happened, and his anger and fear keep boiling over. How can he hold on to the one good person in his life, when his outbursts keep threatening his already uncertain future? External Website

Authors L John Lennon ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos A child of the state 2012 TED Talk with Lemn Sissay. Literature has long been fascinated with fostered, adopted and orphaned children, from Moses to Cinderella to Oliver Twist to Harry Potter. So why do many parentless children feel compelled to hide their pasts? Poet and playwright Lemn Sissay tells his own moving story. External Website

Television Shows Three Pines 2022 Three Pines is a mystery television series starring Alfred Molina based on the novel series by Louise Penny, centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec police force. His parents died when he was a child and he was raised by an adoptive grandmother. Episode 1-2 It's Christmas in Three Pines- and once again Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team are called to investigate another murder CC who everybody disliked - even though she was killed with the entire town present...no one saw a thing. Gamache is also looking into disappearance of an Indigenous woman Blue Two-Rivers. Episode 3-4 begins with a murder in an old orphanage. It transpires that the old school, St. Anthony’s, was intricately linked to the history of Three Pines, a place where indigenous children who had been taken from their families were tortured and kept prisoners for years. Fans of Agatha Christie will enjoy the series. External Website

Comics, Comic books & Graphic Novels Valda Valda ➝ Warrior Nun Areala Ben Dunn ➝ Little Orphan Annie Harold Gray ➝ Nubia: Real One Written by L.L. McKinney; illustrated by Robyn Smith. ➝ Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom ➝ Mary Shelley: Monster Hunter Vol. 1: Abomination (Mary Shelley Monster Hunter Tp) Vol 1-5 Adam Glass (Author), Olivia Cuartero-Briggs (Author), Mike Marts (Editor), Hayden Sherman (Artist) ➝ Zenobia Morten Durr; Lars Horneman ➝ The Mythmakers John Hendrix ➝ Modesty Blaise Peter O'Donnell, Jim Holdaway ➝ The Adoption Zidou (Author), Arno Monin (Artist) ➝ Orphan Black Orphan Black ➝ Lord of the Flies (graphic novel) 2023 William Golding, Aimee de Jongh ➝ Sunny Taiyō Matsumoto ➝ Manga - The Promised Neverland Kaiu Shirai (Author), Posuka Demizu (Illustrator) ➝ Back to Top