Performing Arts Poet, musician, and author Gil Scott-Heron Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) born Gilbert in Chicago to singer Bobbie Scott-Heron and soccer player Giles Heron, was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. Not long after Gilbert’s birth, his parents separated and Gil was sent to live in Tennessee with his grandmother, Lillie Scott. Lillie Scott bought a piano and young Gil learnt how to play by ear. His grandmother also introduced him to the work of Langston Hughes. After his grandmother’s death, Gil moved to New York to live with his mother. At DeWitt Clinton high school in the Bronx, an English teacher was impressed by Gil’s writing ability and recommended him to receive a scholarship so he could attend Fieldston School, a private university preparatory school. Wanting to reach a wider audience, Scott-Heron recorded his first alum in 1970. External Website

Radio & Podcast Historical fiction with Jodi Picoult The Penguin Podcast 2024 In Episode 7 of the Penguin Podcast, you can hear how American writer Jodi Picoult was inspired by the story of Emilia Bassano/Lanyer to include her in her lastest work, the historical fiction novel By Any Other Name. In By Any Other Name, Picoult writes Lanyer as one of those who wrote Shakespeare’s plays, a controversial position to take but as she says, the book is fiction. https://www.penguin.co.uk/podcast External Website

Television Shows Dear Child 2023 Dear Child (2023) is a German thriller (Netflix) based on a novel of the same name by Romy Hausmann. A 13-year-old missing persons case is reopened when a mysterious woman is struck by a car in a German forest one night. We find out the woman was kidnapped months previously and taken to a window-less house to care for 2 children. The 3 are imprisoned by a man the children call Poppa. Poppa was raised in kinship care by his grandparents. External Website

Authors S Suits ➝ Sirens ➝ Self Made. Inspired by the Life of Madam CJ Walker ➝ Savage River ➝ 60MinutesAustralia: Brave whistleblowers expose one of Australia's worst child abuse scandals ➝ Stuff the British Stole (TV Series) ➝ Significant Others ➝ Switched at Birth ➝ Sister, Sister (TV series) ➝ Strike ➝ The Sinner ➝ Sleeping Dog ➝ Sherlock ➝ Silent Witness ➝ Suspicion ➝ Sherwood ➝ Sebastian Fitzek's Therapy ➝ Silo ➝ Sister Boniface Mysteries ➝ Surface ➝ Slow Horses ➝ Shameless ➝ Small Island TV show ➝ Smother ➝ Superman & Lois ➝ Superkids: Breaking Away from Care ➝ Stranger Things ➝ Sanditon ➝ Shadow and Bone ➝ Back to Top

Poets Cast: In the darkness of night is where we find light Rowan Aderyn 2023 Rowan Aderyn's early childhood was marked by trauma, and spent time in foster care. Rowan earned numerous qualifications including a Master's degree in Project Management and success within one of the UK's largest firms. Cast is an anthology of poems and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. The collection of poems explore themes of abuse, identity, healing, resilience, and hope. Link to website: https://rowanaderyn.com/ External Website

Radio & Podcast From ‘devil’s child’ to star ballerina | Michaela DePrince Ted Talks 2014 In this TedTalk Michaela DePrince (born Mabinty Bangura 1995-2024) talks about her time before and while in an orphanage in Siera Leone. She was often hungry in the orphanage because she’d receive the smallest portion of food as she was #27, the last one in. It was also while Michaela was in the orphanage that she was inspired – by a photo in a magazine – to be a ballerina. Michaela was 4 when she was adopted by an American family – with her friend #26 – and her adoptive mother encouraged her to dance. Michaela DePrince is currently performing with the Boston Ballet. External Website

Academic Articles Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories Craig Evans 2019 People who spent time in public care as children are often represented as ‘care leavers’. This paper investigates how ‘care leaver’ is discursively constructed as a group identity, by analyzing 18 written personal experience stories from several charity websites by people identified or who self-identify as care leavers. Several approaches to narrative analysis are used: a clause-level analysis based on Labovʼs code scheme; the identification of turning points; an analysis of ‘identity work’; and an analysis of subject positions relative to ‘master narratives’. The findings from each of the methods are then combined to reveal how intertextual, narrative-structural, and contextual factors combine to constitute a common care leaver discourse. This forms the basis for a characterization of ‘care leaver’ group identity as ‘survivors of the system’. The findings also reveal how ‘care leaver’ as type, including stereotype, influences how identity is constructed in the personal experience narratives. External Website

Television Shows Jack Ryan 2018 American political thriller. In the first series, there are 2 characters who were in foster care, terrorists Mousa and Ali Bin Suleiman. External Website

Performing Arts American singer, founding member Supremes Mary Wilson Mary Wilson (1944 – 2021) was an American singer. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, but at age three was taken in by aunt and unclue in Detroit, believing them to be her parents. Mary Wilson gained worldwide recognition as a founding member of The Supremes, the most successful Motown act of the 1960s and the best-charting female group in U.S. chart history, as well as one of the best-selling girl groups of all-time. The trio reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100 with 12 of their singles, ten of which feature Wilson on backing vocals. Wilson remained with the group following the departures of the other two original members Florence Ballard (in 1967) and Diana Ross (in 1970), though the trio disbanded following Wilson's own departure in 1977. Wilson later became a New York Times best-selling author in 1986 with the release of her first autobiography, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, which set records for sales in its genre, and later for the autobiography Supreme Faith: Someday We'll Be Together. Continuing a successful career as a concert performer in Las Vegas, Wilson also worked in activism, fighting to pass Truth in Music Advertising bills and donating to various charities. Wilson was inducted along with Ross and Ballard (as members of the Supremes) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. External Website

Films/Videos Girl in the Picture 2022 Girl in the Picture is the distressing story of a man who was abandoned to a children's home where he was beaten and raped who then went on to abduct and abuse children. Girl in the Picture begins with the death in Oklahoma of a 20 year old woman. Her 2 year old son, Michael, is taken into foster care, and her husband, Clarence Hughes, is under suspicion. The dead woman is identified as Tonya Hughes, but when Tonya Hughes' mother is called, she says her daughter died at 18months of age. After 4 years in foster care, Michael Hughes is kidnapped by Clarence Hughes and disappears. It is decades before the real identity of the dead woman is uncovered. External Website

Writers Elizabeth Anionwu Dame Elzabeth Anionwu (b. 1947) is the daughter of an Irish woman and Nigerian father, Elizabeth had a disrupted childhood as she lived in a convent between periods of being with her single mother, which she talks about in her memoir, Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union (2016). Elizabeth Anionwu went on to become a specialist in treating the blood disorders, sickle-cell and thalessemia, created the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at the University of West Lond, and earned a PhD. During her long career she publish many works related to sickle cell disease, as well as A short history of Mary Seacole (2005). Elzabeth Anionwu is the recipient of many awards, including being appointed a CBE in 2001, a Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing in 2004, and an Order of Merit in 2022. External Website

Writers Nina Bawden 1925-2012 Nina Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) was an English novelist and children's writer. Bawden was lived in Ilford, Essex, in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised". Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. She was evacuated during World War II to Aberdare, Wales, at the age of fourteen. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She is one of very few who have both served as a Booker judge and made a Booker shortlist as an author. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award. External Website

Authors D Benjamin Zephaniah (Podcast) ➝ Jackie Kay ➝ Discovering you are not who you thought you were ➝ Charles Dickens - Great Expectations ➝ Malik and Mark ➝ Baroness Floella Benjamin, DBE ➝ The Second Victim: Daisy's Story ➝ A Journey through the Disney Animated Classics ➝ Dr Johnson's Black Heir ➝ Cher, singer and actor ➝ Inside A Mountain ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast The Poet: Dr. Maya Angelou American Masters The venerable poet, writer, activist, dancer and singer Dr. Maya Angelou (1928-2014) teaches that above all else, we are more alike than we are unalike. In this episode, she share insights into her life as a teacher, and what it takes to be courageous. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Dangerous Freedom Lawrence Scott 2021 Dangerous Freedom (2021) is a historical novel by Trinidad born writer Lawrence Scott about Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804). Dido Elizabeth Belle was born into slavery. Her father, Captain John Lindsay of the British Royal Navy, took Dido with him when he returned to England in 1765 and left her to be raised by his uncle Willam and aunt Elizabeth. The Earl and Countess of Mansfield lived at Kenwood House in Hampstead. They were already raising another great-niece, Lady Eliabeth Murray. Dido Elizabeth Belle lived at Kenwood House for 31 years. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles The people making a difference: the woman who created a community for fellow adult adoptees The Guardian ➝ Care leaver Kerry Littleford: 'I want to give opportunities to people who haven’t had them' The Guardian ➝ Former Cranbrook student says he was sexually abused at private Sydney boys' school ABC News ➝ The Pale Blue Eye The Conversation ➝ My mum has bipolar. My dad was a recovering alcoholic.' - Leeds City Council chief exec Tom Riordan on why we need to open up about mental illness Yorkshire Evening Post ➝ Being homeless felt inevitable': after years in care, I was living in a tent. Who was to blame? The Guardian ➝ Meera Mistry Meera Mistry ➝ Simone Biles becomes youngest living person to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom Independent ➝ Angelina Jolie's casting game with Cambodian orphans sparks outrage Harriet Alexander ➝ Sister Kate's site to become home to Perth's first Aboriginal aged care facility ABC News ➝ The love that helped me beat hell of foster care Paul Barber (actor) ➝ When Lucy O'Flaherty took up shoemaking she didn't know it was part of her heritage Fiona Blackwood ➝ Torn between her African and English mums: Lola (Jaye) had an idyllic childhood - until the day social workers knocked at the door Amanda Cable ➝ FamilyConnect Family ➝ The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson review – an elegant retelling of Shakespeare Sarah Crown ➝ The nature boy who could Sydney Morning Herald ➝ America's Riches School Serves Low-Income Kids. Propublica ➝ Thousands of children adopted by Americans are without citizenship. Congress is unwilling to act ABC News (USA) ➝ Guatemala’s baby brokers: how thousands of children were stolen for adoption The Guardian Long Read ➝ The Zombies Singer Colin Blunstone Learned His Aunt Was His Mom. She Bared Her Soul to Him Right Before Dying Jeremy Helligar ➝ Case Shined First Light on Abuse of Children The New York Times ➝ ‘This book kept me alive’: Jenni Fagan on writing a memoir of her childhood in care The Guardian ➝ Care Experienced student behind new John Lewis Partnership brand: Made with Care John Lewis ➝ Care leavers tell stories in 'pain into power' art BBC News (Manchester, UK) ➝ Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Home survivors mark 100 years as push continues for museum ABC News ➝ Alma's Not Normal review – this bleak, brilliant comedy is far from ordinary Lucy Mangan ➝ Meet Karen Menzies, Australia's first Indigenous Matilda Karen Menzies ➝ Orphans Making It in the World Noel Murray ➝ Khelsi Price Khelsi Price ➝ Katherine Rundell's top 10 orphans Katherine Rundell ➝ Children in need of ‘rescuing’: challenging the myths at the heart of the global adoption industry The Conversation ➝ Peter Mullan’s Orphans find a new ‘home’ Kenny Smith ➝ The Vatican's Children 60 Minutes ➝ Natalia Grace's sad and bizarre adoption story gets the TV treatment ABC News (Australia) ➝ Mother and Baby Homes - Sorting the 'Sinful from the Righteous' Katherine Waugh ➝ Government expresses 'regret', will compensate for disappeared Yemenite children The Times of Israel ➝ The care leaver who made a number one album BBC News ➝ Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey Restless ➝ Every one of us has a different story': a historic portrait of care system success The Guardian ➝ Sir Mo Farah reveals he was trafficked to the UK as a child BBC News ➝ Living in Adoption's Emotional Aftermath The New Yorker ➝ Intelligent women are dangerous, no?’ Samantha Morton on sexism, success and survival The Guardian ➝ Kids Were Marched Everywhere. This was a Concentration Camp' RolingStone ➝ The Show Must Go On: On Billie Holiday's Last Live Performance Literary Hub (Billie Holliday) ➝ Statues of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter erected at historical Aboriginal meeting place ABC News (Australia) ➝ How Syria's dictatorship used a global child welfare charity to 'disappear' children Haya Al Badarneh & Jess Kelly ➝ I'll never know where I'm from': plight of the adopted children of Bangladesh's Birangona women Thaslima Begum, Rosie Swash ➝ The Orphanage review – terrific tale of an Afghan teen in trouble Peter Bradshaw ➝ After I was taken off my birth parents, my foster carers became the family I needed Kirsty Capes ➝ Almost 70 mass unmarked child graves discovered by ITV News investigation into mother and baby homes Sarah Corker ➝ Adoption support charity shreds 'irreplaceable' files to save space BBC ➝ Jenni Fagan’s ‘visceral’ memoir of growing up in care wins Gordon Burn prize The Guardian ➝ Peter Norris grew up on the run with his bank-robber dad. He refuses to be defined by his past ABC News (Australia) ➝ Jane Hansen Prize Frank Golding ➝ Care Leavers Facing ‘Vile’ Assessments in Postcode Lottery when Becoming Mothers Sophia Alexandra Hall ➝ Alone in the world | The Spectator Philip Hensher ➝ I was taken into care at two years old – what really happened? Kerry Hudson ➝ ‘I cried, I cried. I had no one’: the brutal child kidnappings that shamed Belgian Congo The Guardian ➝ ABC's Patricia Karvelas on her experience of Parliament's toxic 'sexist' culture and how a childhood tragedy shaped her. Natasha Johnson ➝ "Malcolm Still Speaks." Ibram X. Kendi on George Breitman and the Enduring Legacy of Malcolm X. Literary Hub (Malcolm X) ➝ An evening with your life your story Amanda Knowles ➝ The Wild Wist The Monthly ➝ Sweden urged to ban international adoption after damning inquiry findings The Guardian ➝ Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last novel The Conversation (Marquez) ➝ Tasmania's connection to author Joseph Conrad remembered on anniversary of his death Carol Raabus ➝ The Real Lord of the Flies The Guardian ➝ Border officers saw a couple behaving oddly with a baby - and uncovered a mystery BBC ➝ Our babies were taken after 'biased' parenting test - now we're fighting to get them back BBC News ➝ Biden issues 'long overdue' apology for federal Indigenous boarding schools PBS NewsHour ➝ Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: Vanity Fair ➝ BBC Teach - History KS3 / GCSE: Small Axe - Alex Wheatle and the Brixton Uprising Alex Wheatle ➝ The One Percent compilation Inspired Youth ➝ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: class prejudices, the convict stain and a corpse-bride The Conversation ➝ Who is Ronnie Archer Morgan? Homes & Antiques ➝ Simone Biles' scathing testimony was a warning about power and complicity MSNBC ➝ I was a ward of the state. The horrors of the Parramatta Girls' Home were legendary The Conversation (Parramatta) ➝ How Superman Became a Christ-Like Figure in American Culture Literary Hub ➝ How Horseback Riding Helped Barbara Stanwyck Rise Above Hollywood Misogyny Literary Hub ➝ How Two Jewish Kids in 1930s Cleveland Altered the Course of American Pop Culture Literary Hub ➝ Orphans in Kids' Movies: Let's Stop Going There Jeff Alexander ➝ Greece Simplifies Citizenship Restoration Schengen News ➝ Christian Bale unveils plans to build 12 foster homes in California Christian Bale ➝ Ward of the State; The Gap in Ella Fitzgerald's Life Nina Bernstein ➝ The West African children brought up by white foster families in the English countryside Symeon Brown ➝ Like Jane Eyre, I’ve been seen as unconventional and abnormal. I’m autistic – is she too? The Conversation ➝ ‘I lived in a state of terror’: Patricia Cornwell on childhood trauma, her new novel and the search for Bigfoot The Guardian - Patricia Cornwell ➝ Indian orphans weave award-winning movie magic Sujoy Dhar ➝ Hutchinson Heinemann signs Fagan's 'extraordinary' memoir in two-book deal Jenni Fagan ➝ Barrister and Chair of Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Ivor Frank ➝ Denmark says sorry to children of failed experiment Inuit Greenlander ➝ George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father Simon Hattenstone ➝ Holidays in hell: summer camp with Russia’s forgotten children The Guardian ➝ Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later Literary Hub ➝ Belgium found guilty of crimes against humanity in colonial Congo The Guardian ➝ ‘Next time bring my daughter’: Barbara Demick reunited a Chinese family with the stolen ‘missing twin’ adopted in the US The Conversation ➝ Remembering the original Superman Aljazeera ➝ Children evacuated during Vietnam War's Operation Babylift are on a quest to find their families ABC News (Australia) ➝ Seoul Searching ABC News ➝ Smell like a woman, not a rose’: Chanel No. 5 100 years on, an iconic fragrance born from an orphanage Gary Mortimer ➝ Foster families who ignore race are participating in a pernicious form of racism Derek Owusu ➝ Chilean mother reunites with her twin daughters for the first time in 45 years CNN ➝ ‘The hardest thing is to forgive yourself’: actor Samantha Morton and writer Jenni Fagan on the trauma of growing up in care The Guardian ➝ Ellie Simmonds on finding her birth mother: ‘During this journey I cried so much’ by Emine Saner Ellie Simmonds ➝ ‘Designed to tear families apart’: a shocking film exposes abuse and infanticide The Guardian ➝ Baby stolen during Argentina's military rule found after 48 years BBC ➝ Freddie Figgers: The millionaire tech inventor who was 'thrown away' as a baby Lucy Wallis ➝ Prince Philip: A turbulent childhood stalked by exile, mental illness and death Prince Philip ➝ Back to Top

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

Authors B Belgravia ➝ Bergerac ➝ Bad Monkey ➝ Bosch: Legacy ➝ Blindspot ➝ Bodkin ➝ Ballard ➝ Baptiste ➝ Blood ➝ Bosch ➝ Bad Sisters ➝ Boy Swallows Universe (television series) ➝ Blackshore ➝ Black Butterflies ➝ Breaking the Silence: Britain's Adoption Scandal ➝ Bodies ➝ Bones ➝ Birdsong ➝ Bridgerton ➝ Based on a True Story ➝ Back ➝ Berlin Station ➝ Black Earth Rising ➝ Borgen ➝ BBC Two - Neil Morrissey: Care Home Kid, Episode 1 ➝ Bordertown ➝ Back to Top

Fiction by Care Experienced authors When the Stars Go Dark Paula McLain 2021 A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another. External Website

Authors K Colin Kaepernick ➝ Lloyd Kelly ➝ Back to Top