Television Shows Three Days of Christmas 2019 Three Days of Christmas (2019) is a Spanish limited series set about 10 years after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). 3 girls grow up in a sheltered home but they take in a 15-year old whose life is in danger and become 4 sisters. Over time conflicts develop and the foster sister rejects her foster family. External Website

Non Fiction Unexpected Forces Lotus Place 2022 Unexpected Forces (2022) is a beautiful collection of illustrated stories and poems written by Forgotten Australians. It was published by Lotus Place & Micah Projects Queensland. Forgotten Australians is a term used by many to remember the estimated 500k Australians who were in ‘out of home’ care during the 20th century. Forgotten Australians came together in a series of creative writing workshops in 8 locations across Queensland to share their stories. Writes Katie McGuire, Project Coodinator for Lotus Place & Micah Projects: “This anthology will contribute to the legacy of Forgotten Australians, and those who are survivors of institutional child abuse. It serves as a testimony to their strength and resilience, imaginations, and compassionate hearts.” External Website

Authors G Ruth ➝ Invisible thread ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast The century of foundlings Conversations 2026 In this episode of Conversations, Australian writer Cynthia Banham talks with host Richard Fidler about finding out the story of her great-grandmother, Natalina. Cynthia had grown up thinking Natalina was orphaned in Bologna, Italy during the latter years of the 19th century. What she found out was that Natalina hadn’t been orphaned; she was abandoned by her mother. Wanting to know more, Cynthia headed to Bologna with her own family. “Along the way she uncovered the stories of 'bastardini' (a home for bastards), literate midwives, epigenetics and possible incest.” https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/cynthia-banham-journalist-writer-motherhood/106545404 External Website

Films/Videos Film | DrumCamFilms 2019 Be-Longing is the story of Khoji, a 9-year ‘looked after’ boy living within a foster family. External Website

Radio & Podcast Season 3, Episode 6 Dee Michell and Rosie Canning on Care Experience & Culture - Trauma Resonance Resilience Lisa Cherry Dee Michell and Rosie Canning join Lisa Cherry to talk about a new Digital Archive called Care Experience and Culture. External Website

Television Shows Dark Winds 2022 Dark Winds (2022-2025) is an American thriller series based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels series by Tony Hillerman. Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn and Kiowa Gordon as Jim Chee lead a mostly Native American cast. The show is set in the 1970s Four Corners area of the American Southwest and features the work of Navajo tribal police. In Series 1, we find out that Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), a Navajo Police Sergent, was taken in by Joe Leaphorn and his wife, Emma (Deanna Allison) as a teenager. During this series, the Leaphorns also take in pregnant teenager Sally (Elva Guerra). The 3rd Care Experienced Character in Series 1 is extremist James Tso (Jeremiah Bitsui) who hated being in one of the notorious American Indian boarding schools so much he killed his grandfather because his grandfather sent him back to the school after he’d run away. In Series 2, we’re not sure if the Caucasian American character, Colton Wolf (Nicholas Logas) was in the foster care system because his mother was imprisoned after murdering his father & sister, or whether he killed his mother because of what she’d done. Dark Winds presents Colton Wolf as a dangerous man still troubled by this early trauma. External Website

Radio & Podcast The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp BBC Outlook 2022 In this episode of BBC Outlook, 2 sisters who were separated as children and raised in different foster families, talk about setting up Camp to Belong programs in the United States (and in Australia too). One of the sisters, Lynn Price, was 8 before she found out she had a biological sister. Even after she found out, Lynn spent little time with her sister, Andi Andree. The aim of Camp to Belong is to bring together other siblings who are separated by the foster care system. https://camptobelong.org/ External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Jane Hansen Prize Frank Golding 2024 The Jane Hansen Prize for History Advocacy was established in 2020 to recognise the efforts of a group or individual that has advocated for the value of history, the work of historians and/or the importance of an education in history. The winners of our 2024 prize were: Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) The Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) is an independent peak membership body established in 2000 to provide support, advocacy, research and empowerment for survivors of past abuse and neglect in child welfare systems in Australia and New Zealand. CLAN has shown leadership in advocating for a more authentic, layered and nuanced history and, in doing so, generated vitality to a previously neglected field of public history. In the aftermath of the Royal Commission, CLAN won a Commonwealth grant to purchase a property to serve as a permanent home for the Australian Orphanage Museum, now established in Ryrie Street, Geelong. The unique museum is a remarkable achievement among CLAN’s contributions to the way history is presented and received in the community. Dr Frank Golding represented CLAN Read more about CLAN: https://clan.org.au/ External Website

Television Shows Goolagong 2026 Goolagong (2026) is a biographical miniseries about the legendary Aboriginal Australian tennis star Evonne Goolagong Cawley (b. 1951). Lila McGuire plays in the lead role & the series covers Goolagong’s journey from the small town of Barellan in NSW to becoming a global tennis star. Goolagong includes explores the time when 14 year old Evonne moved in with her coach Vic Edwards & his family (although only 1 of his 5 daughters is depicted) & covers his later controlling & abusive behaviour. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lost for words Stephanie Butland 2017 Lost for Words features a care experienced character who is intelligent, articulate, a lover of words and books and of course feisty, vulnerable and not a stereotype. Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look closely, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are things she'll never show you. Fifteen years ago Loveday lost all she knew and loved in one unspeakable night that led to her being taken into foster care.Now, she finds refuge in the unique little York bookshop where she works. Everything is about to change for Loveday. Someone knows about her past. Someone is trying to send her a message. And she can't hide any longer.-- External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Rembering Babylon David Malouf 1993 Remembering Babylon (1993) is a novel by esteemed Australian writer David Malouf (b. 1934). Gemmy Fairley is a 13 year old English cabin boy who is washed ashore in far north Queensland. It is the 1840s and Gemmy is taken in by First Nations people. When, 16 years later, Gemmy moves into the world of white settlers, the settlers see him as not fitting in – he’s not white, but nor is he black. Gemmy may be illiterate and yet he can read the landscape – and the settlers. Remembering Babylon won the inaugural 1996 International Dublin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the Banjo Prize for Fiction. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles James Covey, African Sailor, Helps the Amistad Captives to Freedom New England Historical Society 2024 James Benjamin Covey (c1825-1850) was a sailor who is remembered for his role as an interpreter during legal proceedings in the USA. Covery was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. His African name, Kaweli, means “war road” in Mende. It is thought he was kidnapped at the age of 5 or 6 while walking on a road called Kaw-we-li & named by his captors after the road. 3 years later he was sold to a European slaveholder & shipped to Cuba. The slave trade was officially outlawed at the time, the ship was intercepted & the captives, including Covey, were freed. Covey went into the care of Rev John William Weeks. He later joined the British Royal Navy. Covey was discovered to be fluent in Mende, a major language of Sierra Leone. Taken to New Haven, he translated the testimonies of 3 Mende-speaking captives in the Amistad civil trial of 1841. His translations helped show that the mutiny resulted from the captives being taunted & threatened with being killed. Eventually, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in United States v. The Amistad that the captives were not slaves, but freeborn men and had legally defended themselves in gaining their freedom. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography Jim Tully 2003 A bestseller in 1924, Jim Tully takes us across the seamy underbelly of pre-WWI America on freight trains, and inside hobo jungles and brothels while narrowly averting railroad bulls (cops) and wardens of order.Written with unflinching honesty and insight, Beggars of Life follows Tully from his first ride at age thirteen, choosing life on the road over a deadening job after years in an orphanage, through his teenage years of learning the ropes of the rails and -living one meal to the next.Tully’s direct, confrontational approach helped shape the hard-boiled school of writing, and later immeasurably influenced the noir genre. Beggars of Life was the first in Tully’s five-volume memoir, dubbed the "Underworld Edition," recalling his transformation from road-kid to novelist, journalist, Hollywood columnist, chain maker, boxer, circus handyman, and tree surgeon. External Website

Films/Videos Christmas Child 2004 Christmas Child (2004). After his adopted father dies, a mysterious photograph, which may be a clue as to his origins, leads a journalist Jack Davenport (William R. Moses) to a small Texas town at Christmastime. External Website

Poetry Listener Lemn Sissay This collections includes love poems, reflections on history, and soap operas set in the inner city. External Website

Radio & Podcast May Wirth: bareback riding queen The History Listen 2020 This podcast tells the story of adoptee May Wirth (1894-1978) who was an Australian circus performer, famous for somersaults while riding a horse. May was born in Bundagberg Queensland. Her mother, Dezeppo Marie, left her father, circus performer John Zinga when the children were small. May was put up for adoption and in 1901 was adopted by Mary Wirth. Mary was an equestrienne and sister of circus owners, Philip and George Wirth. May Wirth performed with Barnum and Bailey in the United States. She was inducted into the Circus Hall of Fame in 1963. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Where the Crawdads Sing (novel) Delia Owens 2018 For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. External Website

Children's Fiction The Invisible String (3-6 years) Patrice Karst 2018 Parents, educators, therapists, and social workers alike have declared The Invisible String the perfect tool for coping with all kinds of separation anxiety, loss, and grief. In this relatable and reassuring contemporary classic, a mother tells her two children that they're all connected by an invisible string. "That's impossible!" the children insist, but still they want to know more: "What kind of string?" The answer is the simple truth that binds us all: An Invisible String made of love. Even though you can't see it with your eyes, you can feel it deep in your heart, and know that you are always connected to the ones you love. Does everybody have an Invisible String? How far does it reach? Does it ever go away? This heartwarming picture book for all ages explores questions about the intangible yet unbreakable connections between us, and opens up deeper conversations about love. Recommended and adopted by parenting blogs, bereavement support groups, hospice centers, foster care and social service agencies, military library services, church groups, and educators, The Invisible String offers a very simple approach to overcoming loneliness, separation, or loss with an imaginative twist that children easily understand and embrace, and delivers a particularly compelling message in today's uncertain times. This special paperback edition includes includes vibrant new illustrations and an introduction from the author. External Website

Writers Paul Nurse 1949- Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born1949), is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. Paul Nurse grew up with his grandparents, thinking his grandparents were his parents. He did not find out the truth until he was in his fifties. Paul Nurse attended the University of Birmingham and went on to a career in research, including publishing extensively. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle. External Website