Authors W Wayward ➝ Who is Erin Carter? ➝ When Hope Calls ➝ Warrior Nun ➝ Wire in the Blood ➝ White House Farm ➝ Who Killed Sara ➝ Winter ➝ Will Trent (TV series) ➝ We Hunt Together ➝ Why Women Kill ➝ Water Under the Bridge (tv show) ➝ Back to Top

Non Fiction Behind The Wall. The Women of the Destitute Asylum Adelaide, 1852-1918 Mary Geyer 1994 Behind The Wall: The Women of the Destitute Asylum, 1852-1918 (1994) by Mary Geyer is a history of some women who once lived at the Destitute Asylum in Adelaide, South Australia. According to Mary Geyer, in March 1856, there were "65 women, 30 men and 43 children" housed at the Destitute Asylum. Amongst the vignettes of women Geyer includes in her book are those of woman born in the Asylum's Lying-in home. For example, Olive Doran (b. 1885) went into kinship care after her mother unmarried died, and Ada Deare (b. 1900) went into foster care. Adelaide’s Migration Museum (opened in 1986) now occupies the site on which the Destitute Asylum once existed. External Website

Television Shows London Spy 2015 Alex and Danny are from different backgrounds, different lifestyles. Just as they are settling into a committed relationship, Alex disappears. Danny then commits himself to finding who killed Alex. At the heart of the story is an account of informal adoption. External Website

Authors W Integrating personal and professional experiences: Seven phases to integrating loss and grief. ➝ Oliver Twisted: the origins of Lord Voldemort in the Dickensian orphan. ➝ Lost Boys and Recovered Classics: Literary and Social Memory in Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (1995) ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Orphanage Boy Szablicki Ryszard 2015 Ryszard Szablicki was born in Melbourne on 5 June 1952 and immediately placed in a foundling home by his mother. He remained in institutional care for over ten years.In Orphanage Boy:Through the Eyes of Innocence, Ryszard recounts his early life in several Catholic institutions through the eyes of that boy, naive and overwhelmed by the perverse corruption and indifference of a system he couldn't hope to understand.In 1996, he joined a class action against the brutality and abuse of one of these institutions. A federal Senate inquiry followed in 2004, investigating similar allegations. Finally, Ryszard received an unreserved apology for these abuses and some peace of mind. External Website

Artists Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky (1904 – 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. In 1915, the boy and his mother and three sisters escaped Lake Van and he travelled to the United States as a sixteen year old. He spent most his life as a national of the United States. Along with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced in the Armenian Genocide. External Website

Authors Z The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Paperback) ➝ Bridge of Clay ➝ The Book Thief (novel) ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Dirty Laundry Lily Arthur 2022 Dirty Laundry (2022) by Lily Arthur tells the story of a pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old being sent to a notorious Madalene Laundry in Woolowin, Brisbane, Australia. The year was 1967 and so Lily Arthur was, as she writes “caught between an era of women's liberation and the draconian ideology that young women should be punished for deviating from society's 'moral codes'.” Lily’s son was put up for adoption. Lily Arthur later became an activist, joining with other women in Australia whose babies had been forced from them into adoption. She includes some of this story in her book, and concludes with the national inquiry and national apology by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, https://www.ag.gov.au/families-and-marriage/national-apology-forced-adoptions External Website

Films/Videos Fugitive Pieces 2007 Fugitive Pieces is based on the 1996 award winning novel by Canadian writer, Anne Michaels (b. 1958). The film tells the story of Jakob who is 7 when he is orphaned in Poland during WWII. He hides in the forests and is rescued by a Greek archeologist who spirits him away to Greece and safety. Fugitive Pieces was produced by Robert Lantos and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. It premiered as the opening film for the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. External Website

Films/Videos Seeking Justice 2023 In this video, Michelle in Adelaide, South Australia talks about her experience of being falsely diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy and the upheaval this has caused within her family. External Website

Fiction Featuring Care Experience Dust Michael Brissenden 2025 Dust (2025) by Australian writer Michael Brissenden is a crime thriller centred around the death of investigative journalist Charles Goodman. Goodman has been murdered in the now drought-stricken town of Lake Heddon, NSW. NSW police are aware that Goodman was working on a story which involved corruption within the police force and involving organised crime. Young Aaron Love is the man who found the body of Charles Goodman. Determined to find out what happened to his father (missed & presumed dead), he is joined by a young woman, Shona, & finds out that his father, Tobias Love, was involved in a drug & sex trafficking business. Tobias Love is one of the few characters in the novel with a detailed backstory. We find out that his father was a dodgy debt-collector who was killed when Tobias was 12, after which Tobias was in & out of foster care & juvenile detention centres. Although Tobias is caught up with vile criminal activities, he is not the killer. External Website

Children's Fiction The Graveyard Book Neil Gaiman 2008 Nobody Owens is a boy being raised in graveyard by ghosts. There are many adventures for Nobody, or Bod, in the graveyard, but danger if he leaves it - from the man who killed his family. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Orphans of Empire. The fate of London's foundlings Helen Berry 2019 Orphans of Empire tells the story of what happened to the thousands of children who were raised at the London Foundling Hospital, established by Thomas Coram in 1739 and which became the most famous charity in Georgian England. Through extensive archival research, Helen Berry tells previously untold stories of what happened to former foundlings, and of the work they were engaged in during the Industrial Revolution. Included are extracts from George King's autobiography, the only surviving first-hand account written by an 18th century Foundling Hospital child. External Website

Radio & Podcast The indestructible nature of Corey White Corey White 2019 A childhood of abuse and neglect led award-winning Corey White to an unusual place - the stage - via foster care and boarding school. His wit and resilience make his stand-up comedy sharply observed and darkly humorous External Website

Authors L The Girl in the Spider's Web (novel) ➝ Choose Me ➝ Crow Lake ➝ Motherless Brooklyn (novel) ➝ The Long Song ➝ The Flight of Gemma Hardy ➝ The Twins ➝ Too Much Lip ➝ The Everlasting Sunday ➝ The Fall of Man in Wilmslow ➝ The Girls ➝ The Foundling (2022) ➝ Caging Skies ➝ Darkly Dreaming Dexter ➝ Bluebird, Bluebird ➝ Murder in the Mill-Race: A Devon Mystery ➝ Edenglassie ➝ Lily: A Tale of Revenge ➝ The Children's Home ➝ Little Boy Lost ➝ The Memoirs of a Survivor ➝ Small Island ➝ Patience ➝ The Golden Age ➝ Safe With Me ➝ Ginny Moon ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Birnam Wood Eleanor Catton 2023 Birnam Wood (2023) by NZ writer Eleanor Catton is a political thriller. Birnam Wood is the name of an activist, guerilla gardening group based in Christchurch NZ. The founder, Mira Bunting, makes a financial arrangement with billionaire Robert Lemoine who’s planning to build a bunker to survive the apocalypse – or at least that’s what he tells Mira he’s doing. The villainous Robert Lemoine was raised in kinship care by his grandparents. He later decides that his immense wealth is his way of avenging himself against his parents and all the others who had lied to him when he was a child. “He had survived to spite them” writes Catton. External Website

Films/Videos Christmas Story 2007 Did you know *Father Christmas* was an orphan? Well in 'Christmas Story' (2007 Finnish film) he is! It is the story of how orphan, Nikolas became Santa Claus. In Lapland, they raise him communally. with each family taking him for one year and then moving him on to the next. Grateful, Nikolas makes toys for each family that cared for him and so it grows. It becomes a tradition from then, with Nikolas never forgetting the children of those families that received him each year. When a blight hits the village, and none of the families can afford to take him in for the next year, he is taken in by grumpy hermit Iisakki as his carpenter's apprentice. Iisakki works him hard but Nikolas is clever and quick to learn, and Iisakki gradually grows to love Nikolas as his own son. Nikolas begins to live more and more for the spirit of Christmas with each passing year and it becomes his life and as he grows old he becomes the figure known as Santa Claus. External Website

Writers Tom Mackenzie 1939- After Tom Mackenzie (b. 1939) self-published his memoir, The Last Foundling, in 2012, his 26-year-old son suggested he'd need to do some promotion otherwise he wouldn't sell many copies. 73-year-old Tom set up a Twitter account and a blog. The blog led first to a regular column for the local paper, The Plymouth Herald, and then a book deal with Pan Macmillan in 2014.The editors at Pan Macmillan wanted Tom to expand on his story before he was 20 years, asking him to writing an additional 40,000 words on that topic and changing his style to writing in the first person.While they did some 'tweaking' too, Tom insists 90% of the words in the book are his. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Stolen Generations survivor urges governments to act in the lead-up to Sorry Day ABC News 2026 National Sorry Day is an annual event held in Australia on 26 May that commemorates the Stolen Generations—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their families and communities by government and church policies. In this article by Tahnee Jash https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/stolen-generations-urge-governments-to-act-ahead-of-sorry-day/106715488 Stolen Generations survivor Aunty Bronwyn Smith reflects on her childhood experience of forced removal from her family. Aunty Bronwyn Smith lived in the Cherbourg Aboriginal Girls’ Dormitory from the age of 9 for 4 years Now 62, she says: "I'm so broken as a result of it, in the way that I live my life, the way that I am a partner, a mother, grandmother, the way I am with my siblings and my nieces and nephews. All those relationships are impacted," she said. "It's taken me this long, 50-odd years, to be even comfortable about talking about this. National Sorry Day marks the day the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in parliament on 26 May 1997. This was the final document of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families which investigated the past laws, policies, and practices that resulted in the forced removal of Indigenous children (the Stolen Generations) and their subsequent effects. The Inquiry estimated that between 1 in 10 & 1 in 3 Aboriginal Australian children were removed from their families between 1910 & the 1970s. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children continue to be over-represented in Australia’s state child protection system. External Website

Behind the Scenes Russell Lewis Russell Lewis (born 11 September 1963 in London) is an English television writer and former actor. He has worked hard to preserve his anonymity so there is little about his background to be found online. Lewis was born in 1963 in Battersea, south London, raised and formally adopted by his maternal grandmother and her second husband, who provided his surname. He speaks of “a certain lived experience of dark secrets and unhappy families that has stood me in good stead when it comes to Endeavour”. Protective of “the sensitivities of all concerned who are still alive”, he describes his background as “potentially still a bit of an emotional minefield”. Lewis was a child actor. He attended “an academically wonky stage school” between age four and 16, which is why there’s a photo of him on an obscure website: he landed a part in the 1972 period biopic Young Winston, directed by Richard Attenborough, playing the even younger Winston. External Website