Academic Articles Oliver Twist, textbook of child abuse Patricia Brennan 2001 In her 2001 piece for Archives of Disease in Childhood, Patricia Brennan begins: “Oliver Twist, as everybody knows, is Dickens’ novel about an orphaned boy who starts life in a workhouse and after trials on the streets of London in Fagin’s “gang”, is eventually adopted by a middle class gentleman who has liberal and gentle ideas of parenthood.” She goes on to say that: “Clearly, what might have been acceptable in Victorian England was not acceptable to Dickens, who expresses his disapproval of much that he described. In terms of standards in Britain in the year 2001, many of the childcare practices described in Oliver Twist constitute child abuse.” Patricia Brennan concludes her article by writing: “Child abuse and neglect were recognised when Kempe wrote his articles about baby battering in the 1960s and 1970s. However, it has obviously been an issue for centuries and Dickens certainly described all the categories of abuse, together with many predisposing features and many sequelae.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1719007/pdf/v085p00504.pdf External Website

Television Shows For All Mankind 2019 For All Mankind is an American sci-fi drama series exploring an alternate history if the “global space race had never ended”. From Series 2 an adoptee character, Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) has been added to the series. Kelly Baldwin is a scientist who was born Nguyen Thi Hanh in Saigon, South Vietnam in 1966. In 1972 (during the Vietnam War) she was taken to the USA as part of Operation Babylift. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Maddalena and the Dark Julia Fine 2023 Maddalena and the Dark (2023) by American writer, Julia Fine, is a tale of friendship between two girls. One of the girls, Maddalena, is sent to Ospedale della Pieta as a teenager. The other, 15-year-old Luisas, wants to become a protégé of Vivaldi but is not the best violinist. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience All the Good Things Clare Fisher 2018 What if you did a very bad thing... but that wasn't the end of the story? Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn't deserve ever to feel good again. But her counsellor, Erika, won't give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby's head. But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing. What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone - even a 100% bad person - deserve a chance to be good?' External Website

Comics, Comic books & Graphic Novels Orphan Black Orphan Black 2015 Orphan Black is a limited series of comic books based on the television series Orphan Black, which airs on BBC America in the United States and Space in Canada. Sarah's life was changed dramatically after witnessing the suicide of a woman who looked just like her. Sarah learned that, not only were she and the woman clones, but there were others just like them, and dangerous factions at work set on capturing them all. External Website

Writers Rob Watts Rob Watts is an Australian sociologist. He was in state care as a small child until he was adopted by his foster parents. Rob Watts went on to become an academic, with degrees from La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. He is the co-author of many books which examine Australian social life. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Brutal-Surviving Westbrook Boys Home Al 'Crow' Jorgensen Fletcher et al. 2011 This is the harrowing, true story of life inside one of Queensland’s most feared institutions for orphaned, disadvantaged and Aboriginal youth. Thousands of children spent their formative years in fear and misery. All were scarred by the experience. Some perished. Many ‘graduated’ to adult institutions. Crow Fletcher survived to tell his tale. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found: The Costa Book of the Year 2018 Bart van Es 2018 Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents in the Hague - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why. External Website

Performing Arts Comedian & TV Presenter Dara Ó Briain Irish comedian and television presenter, Dara O Briain (b 1972), was born in County Wicklow and adopted as a baby. He has described his childhood as stable and happy. After university, Dara began work as a children’s television present and tried out his comedy on the Irish comedy circuit. By 2005, his show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was widely popular. Between 2005 and 2022 Dara O Briain was the host of the popular Mock the Week on BBC Two. He has also presented a range of other television shows, including the reboot of Robot Wars in 2016. Inspired by the film Philomena (2013), Dara searched for his adoptive mother and has, over time, built a relationship with her – and his 3 sisters and a brother. External Website

Films/Videos The Protege 2021 The Protege (2021) is an action thriller with an orphan character as the protagonist. Anna (Maggie Q) is a professional assassin based in London and running an upmarket book shop as her cover. She was rescued from Vietnam 30 years earlier by Moody Dutton (Samuel L. Jackson), a legendary assassin. Early in the film, Care Experienced writer, Edgar All Poe (foster care), gets a mention as a first edition of his poetry sells for more than 250,000 pounds. External Website

Television Shows Berlin Station 2017 Berlin Station is an American drama series (2016-2018) which follows Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) who, in the first season, arrives at the CIA station in Berlin, Germany.The 2nd season of the show tells the story of the rise of the alt-right in Germany. An extremist thug working for the alt-right, Otto Ganz (Thomas Kretschmann) was in a children's home as a child. His daughter explains his need for a family as the reason for her father's involvement in the movement - it gave him a sense of belonging he'd never had. External Website

Performing Arts Aboriginal Australian, Singer, songrwriter Kutcha Edwards Aboriginal Australian singer-songwriter, Kutcha Edwards (b. 1965), was in institutions as a child. Kutcha is a Mutti-Mutti man; he was born in Balranald, New South Wales, the 9th of 12 children to Mary and Nugget Edwards. A member of the Stolen Generations, Kutcha was removed from his family when he was 18 months old, along with 5 siblings. When he was later moved to Orana Methodist Children’s Home in Burwood, Victoria, Kutcha was reunited with his siblings. As a young man, Kutcha trained in Melbourne to become a community health worker at Koori Kollij, an Aboriginal health service. During the 1990s, Kutcha began signing professionally, with Melbourne band Watbalimba and later with Blackfire. He became a solo artist in 2000. In 2006 Kutcha joined with other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal performers to form Black Arm Band, a company which tours communities in remote regions. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Most Popular Orphan Girl Movies and TV Shows IMDb A listing by IMDb of the most popular movies and televisions with an 'orphan-girl'. External Website

Television Shows The Truth Will Out 2018 The Truth Will Out (2018) is a Swedish thriller series starring singer, comedian & actor Robert Gustafsson in the lead role of police detective Peter Wendel & based on ideas by Swedish criminologist & novelist Malin Persson Giolito. In Series 1, Peter Wendel heads up a cold case unit & is assigned various misfits to work with him. The team determine that a convicted serial killer lied when he confessed to 8 murders. The findings stir up trouble for the Minister of Justice & the police team which originally carried out the investigation. In Series 2, Emelie (Inez Dahl Torhaug) is a 14-year-old in the care of the state & currently in a treatment centre because of self-harm. Bullied for money by other girls in the centre, she takes up sex work. A senior police officer is caught by Peter Wendel & his team paying Emelie for underage sex. External Website

Television Shows The Underground Railway (tv show) 2021 Based on the book by the same name by Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railway is a historical drama following the adventures of Cora Randall (abandoned by her mother as a small child) as she escapes with her friend Caesar from enslavement in the south of America. External Website

Fiction Featuring Care Experience Darling Girls Sally Hepworth 2023 Darling Girls (2023) is a crime novel by Australian writer Sally Hepworth. 3 professional women, all former foster kids, are contacted by police because the remains of a child have been found on the grounds of their former foster home. The story is told from the perspective of each woman as they share their past, their experience in foster care with Miss Fairchild, & the ongoing ramifications of their childhood experiences – addiction, aggression, reluctance to form relationships. The 4th voice in the novel is that of Miss Fairchild who is *spoiler alert* on remand for killing a baby many years ago. External Website

Films/Videos The Batman 2022 There's much discussion of orphans and displaced children throughout the film and an orphanage (now in ruins) is at the centre of the story. One discussion is the very different experience of Bruce Wayne after his parents are killed compared to that of those in an orphanage where 30 children are crowded into a single room. Catwoman's back story is that she went into the 'care system' as a 7 year old after her mother was murdered. External Website

Writers Henry Darger (writer) 1892-1973 Henry Joseph Darger Jr. (1892 – 1973) was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He was born in Chicago and given up for adoption at age four, after his mother died. When his father was hospitalised in 1900, the boy was taken to an orphanage and then to a mental asylum because of his 'bad' behaviour. Darger became famous for his posthumously discovered manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. External Website

Films/Videos Gary 2024 Gary (2024) is an American documentary about the life of actor Gary Coleman, directed by Robin Dashwood and release on 29 August 2024. The film explores Coleman’s life – including his ongoing ill health - as a child star after his success in Diff’rent Strokes and his struggles with fame. Also covered is that Coleman became estranged from his adoptive parents after he found they – and his business manager - had allegedly been stealing from the trust fund he had set up as a 10-year-old. Coleman’s parents denied they were doing anything wrong. There are also questions raised about Coleman’s death, about the circumstances of the fall which caused his head injury. At the time he was living in Utah with his ex-wife Shannon Price with whom he had a difficult relationship. External Website

Writers Stella Dadzie Stella Dadzie is a founder member of OWAAD and is best known for The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (London: Virago, 1985), which won the 1985 Martin Luther King Award for Literature, and which she co-authored with Beverley Bryan and Suzanne Scafe. Dadzie was born in London to a white English mother and Ghanaian father, who was the first trained pilot in Ghana and after joining the RAF and flew as a navigator in missions over Belgium during the Second World War. Dadzie was in foster care in Wales for about 18 months, before being returned to her mother at the age of four. Interviewed in 2020, Dadzie said: "We experienced poverty, homelessness and racism – my mother was ostracised as she had a black child and was a single parent. We moved around London a huge amount, as we were constantly getting thrown out by racist landlords. There was a lot of pain and suffering." Dadzie did not meet her father and siblings until she was 12. External Website