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Fiction featuring Care Experience Worst Case Scenario Helen Fitzgerald 2019 There is some discussion about child protection in Worst Case Scenario as Helen Fitzgerald is exploring the life of a seasoned social worker who once worked in that area. Mentioned in passing is Vanessa, a young Care Experienced woman Mary knew as a baby and who was going on to college at 18 (p. 66) having been adopted as a child. The other Care Experienced Person in the story is John Paul O'Donnell, a drug-addicted young man Mary takes advantage of. External Website

Non Fiction American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Secret History of Adoption Gabrielle Glaser 2021 In 2021, American journalist Gabrielle Glaser published American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption. Glaser used the case study of a teenage girl and her baby to tell the story of the mid-century practice of sending off ‘unwed’ girls and women to have their babies in secret and then ‘relinquish’ them to an adopting couple. For the next 50 years, the mother in the story, Margaret, regrets the loss of her son; the adoptive parents are bewildered by their son; and the son, David, hears he was chosen by his adoptive parents but wonders why his birth mother rejected him. There was something about post-war America, argues, Glaser, that encouraged the creation of ‘perfect’ nuclear families. Yet the adoption agencies collecting fees didn’t consider the feelings of adoptees, let alone that crucial medical information was not being passed along. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Frankie Graham Norton 2024 Frankie (2024) by Irish comedian and television host, Graham Norton, tells the story of Frankie Powell. Frankie is being cared for by Damian in her small London flat. Damian listens as Frankie tells the story of her life which includes being orphaned at the age 11 and running off to London as soon as she can. The narrative travels from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York & reveals Frankie’s resilience & endurance. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles ‘Designed to tear families apart’: a shocking film exposes abuse and infanticide The Guardian 2024 Reporter Veronica Esposito writes about the Devastating documentary Sugarcane which reveals horrifying stories from controversial Indigenous residential schools. Residential schools for Indigenous children have been a stain on the histories of both the United States and Canada, and although steps have been taken in making amends with the past, the new documentary Sugarcane reveals just how much of the process still remains incomplete. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Orphans of the Living: Growing Up in Care in Twentieth-Century Australia Joanna Penglase 2012 In August 2004, Parliamentary senators wept as they presented Forgotten Australians, the report from the Senate Inquiry into the treatment of children in care. Half a million children grew up in care in twentieth-century Australia, and most often these children lived with daily brutal physical and emotional abuse in the sterile environment of an institution. Drawing on interviews, submissions to the Senate Inquiry, and her own experience, Joanna Penglase describes, for the first time, the experience from the perspective of the survivors. With tenderness, compassion and intellect, Penglase begins to unravel the seemingly inexplicable: how and why did this happen. She looks not only at the profound personal costs to these children, but the huge social and economic costs of these past policies. External Website

Authors K Bessie Smith: A Poet's Biography of a Blues Legend ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Thursday's Child Eartha Kitt 1958 This is Eartha Kitt's first autobiography and recalls her impoverished childhood, rejection by her mother and time in foster and kinship care, and becoming a performer from the age of 16. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Magdalenes and I Steven O'Riordan 2024 Steven O’Riordan is an Irish filmmaker, producer & writer. In 2009 he made the film The Forgotten Maggies about the girls and women who were in the Magdalene Laundries. He followed up the film with his book, Whispering Hope: The True Story of the Magdalene Women (2015). Steven O’Riordan now has a podcast, The Magdalenes and I, out which explores his interest in the Magdalene Laundries and the girls and women incarcerated there during the 20th century. https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-magdalenes-and-i/id1736908348 External Website

Television Shows The Salisbury Poisonings 2020 The Salisbury Poisonings (2020) is a docudrama based on the 2018 poisoning by nerve agent of Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent and his daughter, Ulia Skripal, in the City of Salisbury England. The Skripal poisonings resulted in a police officer - Nick Bailey (Rafe Spall) - being poisoned, and later, a couple - Dawn Sturgess (MyAnna Buring) and Charlie Rowley (Johnny Harris) - who found the perfume bottle containing the nerve agent and applied it to themselves. According to the series, Dawn Sturgess' daughter is in kinship care with her grandparents, Caroline (Stella Gonet) and Stan Sturgess (Ron Cook). In a 2020 Guardian article, Caroline and Stan Sturgess say they cooperated with the making of the series because they were unhappy with the way that Dawn had been represented in the media "as a hopeless addict". https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/31/she-never-had-a-voice-dawn-sturgess-parents-hope-tv-drama-bbc-salisbury-poisonings-novichok External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Curious Fate of Care Leavers in Crime Fiction Sarah Hilary 2022 Sarah Hilary writes of her recent Book Club event with Care Experience & Culture and how crime writers using the plot device of care leavers is actually somebody else's reality: "a recent interview with the Care Experience in Culture Project highlighted for me how often writers fall into the trap of creating care leavers who are either irredeemably damaged or possessed of super-powers." External Website

Sport Karen Menzies - Soccer Player Karen Menzies Karen Menzies was the first Aboriginal Australian to play for the Australian women’s soccer squad, the Matildas, playing for 6 years from 1983. Karen Menzies was forcibly removed from her mother when she was an 8-month-old infant and made a Ward of the (NSW) State. Karen went into foster care with Anglo-Scottish Australians who treated her well. However, her love for playing soccer with her foster brother and other boys was actively discouraged by school teachers, even punished. Monitored by the NSW welfare authorities at home, Karen was suddenly removed, because of truancy, from her foster parents—who didn’t even have an opportunity to say goodbye—and put into an institution in Glebe for wards of the state and children who had committed criminal offences.After 2 months, Karen was transferred to a 2nd institution, the King Edward Home in Newcastle, NSW. Here, there were only 15 girls, all wards of the state without criminal convictions, along with houseparents and onsite youth workers. The staff at King Edward Home were “wonderful” and encouraged girls to participate in sport. Karen was dropped off at the local soccer club the same afternoon she arrived. Karen’s soccer career took off while she was living in King Edward Home; she was chosen to play in the NSW state soccer team when she was just 14. At 21, she made it to the national team. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Storm Child Michael Robotham 2024 Storm Child (2024) is the 4th in Australian writer Michael Robotham’s Cyrus Haven & Evie Cormac series. Cyrus Haven – who was raised by his grandparents from age 13 – is a forensic psychologist. Evie Cormac is a young woman Cyrus Haven met in a youth detention centre. He fostered the girl until she turned 18 and he continues to provide a home for her. In Storm Child we learn more about Evie’s background, from the time she arrived in the UK as a 9 year old and when she was later found living in a house with a dead body. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience James Percival Everett 2024 Percival Everett’s most recent novel, James (2024), is a retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A crucial difference between the novels is that whereas it is a white boy narrating the original story, in James, the narrator is Jim, an escaped enslaved man. Jim says he was sold when he was born and then sold again. Jim – James – may be an escaped enslaved man, but he is also a literate man conversing during hallucinations and in his dreams with the enlightenment greats – Voltaire, Rousseau, John Locke. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles FamilyConnect Family 2023 FamilyConnect helps adults who have been adopted or in care find answers to questions about their origins. Finding out about your background and family members can help you understand inherited health risks, make important life choices and understand more about why you were separated from your birth family. Lots of people aren’t aware of their legal rights when accessing their birth and care records, or what they can expect to receive and how to go about searching for information in the first place. Family Action’s FamilyConnect website helps people explore these issues, providing information, guidance, support and signposting to help. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Girl in the Spider's Web (novel) David Lagercrantz 2015 The Girl in the Spider's Web is the 4th novel in the Millennium series (the 1st 3 were written by Stieg Larsson). It uses the characters of hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. The book was written in secrecy by David Lagercrantz who worked on a computer that didn't have an internet connection. Larsson's estate is controlled by Larsson's brother and father who hired Lagercrantz. In the novel, Lisbeth Salander becomes entangled with the Spider Society which is run by Lisbeth's sister, Camilla, who has taken over the criminal operation run by the girls' father. Lagercrantz has gone on to write 2 more books in the series - The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (2017) and The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019). External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shirley (novel by Ronnie Scott) Ronnie Scott 2023 The narrator of Shirley (2023) by Australian writer Ronnie Scott was in informal foster care as a teenager. The unnamed narrator is the daughter of a celebrity in the TV food industry. Celebrity mum fled Australia after she was caught out in an unflattering photograph and teenage daughter was left in the care of mum’s employees collectively named the Gerards. 20 years on and the daughter is buying her own apartment in an inner city Melbourne suburb, mum is selling the family home, and the young woman is wondering about the meaning of life. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Girl Edna O'Brien 2019 Girl (2019) by Irish writer Edna O’Brien is a harrowing portrayal of the abduction of schoolgirls by an extremist religious group. The story is inspired by the April 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, mostly Christian, by the Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram. Edna O’Brien travelled to Nigeria to conduct research for her novel, research which included speaking to some of the girls who escaped. In Girl, the fictional narrator, Maryam is kidnapped, and later married off to a Boko Haram soldier. Having his child complicates the eventual return to Maryam’s own village. External Website

Films/Videos Goodnight, Mister Tom 1998 Goodnight, Mister Tom is a TV movie starring John Thaw, Nick Robinson, and Annabelle Apsion. A shy and quiet World War II evacuee is housed by a disgruntled old man, and they soon develop a close bond. External Website

Children's Fiction Goodnight Mister Tom Michelle Magorian 1981 The story of young Willie Beech, evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. External Website

Academic Articles The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase Three Report Zoe Baker 2024 The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase three report. Phase Three explored any changes in their living, employment, or educational circumstances since Phase Two, their plans for the future, and their views about what policy and practice developments were needed for future generations of care-experienced graduates. External Website