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Fiction featuring Care Experience The Woman in the Window A J Finn 2019 What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock and features an adopted teenage boy. External Website

Radio & Podcast Philip Pullman (BBC) World Book Club 2005 In this podcast talks about his His Dark Materials fantasy triology which features Care Experienced character, Lyra Bbelacqua. He stresses the importances of having helpful characters in children's stories so that children - no matter their circumstances - know there are good people in the world. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Hitler's Forgotten Children Ingrid Von Oelhafen & Tim Tate 2015 Hitler’s Forgotten Children (2015) by Ingrid Von Oelhafen & Tim Tate tells the story of a child born in Slovenia but stolen from her parents by Nazi occupiers. Erika was one of many children stolen by Nazis and sent to live with a German couple. She was renamed Ingrid. After the war, Erika/Ingrid began to uncover the story of her birth and fostering as she also learned about the full scale of what is known as the Lebensborn Program. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Orphan X (novel series) Gregg Hurwitz 2016 Orphan X (2016) is a thriller written by American novelist Gregg Hurwitz. It is the first in a series of books centred around Evan Smoak. At the age of 12, Evan was enrolled in a secret operation to train orphans as assassins for government agencies. Evan or Orphan X maintains access to the program’s funding and weapons after the secret operation is closed and he becomes a vigilante assassin. Other books in the series are Buy a Bullet (2016), The Nowhere Man (2017), Hellbent (2018), Out in the Dark (2019), Into The Fire (2020) and The Prodigal Son (2021). External Website

Television Shows Harrow 2018 Harrow is an Australian television drama series that stars Ioan Gruffudd as Dr. Daniel Harrow. Series 1, Episode 4 has a story where a homeless woman who 'kidnaps' a baby is not believed when she insists the unregistered baby is hers. Series 2, Episode 7 has a woman who was in foster care as a successful alternative medicine advocate and murder victim. External Website

Non Fiction Twelve Mighty Orphans (book) Jim Dent 2008 In this book, Jim Dent tells the story of a group of orphans who became a championship football team. Masonic Home was an orphanage for housing and educating the orphans of Texas Freemasons. When Rusty Russell—himself an orphan—arrived at the school in 1929, the orphanage did not have a football team. Yet, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Masonic Home Mighty Mites was the toughest football team in Texas. They might have been the scrawniest kids with not much, but with Rusty Russell coaching them, the Mighty Mites beat the kids from ‘good’ schools wearing expensive uniforms. External Website

Writers AUTHORS X External Website

Autobiography/Memoir It Is No Secret Donna Meehan 2000 At the age of five, Donna was taken away from her family and sent to a foster family in Newcastle, New South Wales. In this book, Donna reflects back on her childhood memories of becoming an only child in a white family. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Child She Bare Hannah Brown 1919 Hannah Brown was brought to the Foundling Hospital in 1866. She wrote an account of her childhood experiences which was published anonymously The Child She Bare, A Foundling (London, Headley, 1919). She is quite negative about her time in the Foundling. And for when it was written many of her observations are spot on. She writes about the stigma and how ‘children’s happiness and future welfare is sacrificed, even to the extent of their mother’s name, nationality – thrown in the world without a relative or friend to confide in…and have no right to the stigma attached to them.’ External Website

Writers Walter Scott 1771-1832 Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian. Walter Scott was born to a solicitor and the daughter of a doctor in Edinburgh in 1771. At 18 months, Walter contracted infantile paralysis (or polio) and was lame for the rest of his life. Because of his ill health, the boy was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at Sandknowe Farm, in the hope that being out of the city would improve his health. He stayed there until he began school. Scott is respected for his lively historical romances and the other genres he inaugurated, for example, the ‘nautical novel’. He died in 1832 External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shadow in the Empire of Light Jane Routley 2021 Shine's life is usually dull: an orphan without magic in a family of powerful mages, she's left to run the family estate with only an eccentric aunt and telepathic cat for company. But when the family descend on the house for the annual Fertility Festival, Shine is plunged into dark intrigue; stolen letters, a fugitive spy, and family drama mix with murder, sex and secrets, and Shine is forced to decide both her loyalties and future... External Website

Television Shows The Lost Children 2006 With Hudson Mills, Beatrice Joblin, Rhys Castle-Hughes, Mikaela Devitt. Ethan and his sister Amy are travelling by ship from England with their mother Charlotte, to join their father, who has gone ahead of them to establish the family farm. A storm hits, their vessel begins to take on water, and the captain issues the order to abandon ship. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Turn: An Autobiography Norman Wisdom 2003 My Turn. Memoirs by Norman Wisdom With William Hall. The story of Norman Wisdom who was in foster care as a child and as a 14 year old was working as a cabin boy on a cargo ship heading to Argentina. Norman Wisdom's early years could easily have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Left by their frightened mother, ill-treated by a brutal father, Norman and his brother were forced to fend for themselves, sleeping rough in London and stealing food to survive. (William Hall, who assisted Norman Wisdom in the writing of his life story, is a biographer, broadcaster and critic. He is the author of more than a dozen biographies, including Michael Caine, James Dean, Frankie Howerd, Larry Adler and Dick Emery.) External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Prudence (Custard Protocol, 1 Gail Carriger 2015 Fantasy series. Prudence is the child of Lord Maccon and Alexa Tarrabottie but has been brought up by Lord Akeldama because her magic makes it safer for her to live apart from her parents. She has had regular contact with them and sees herself as having three parents. When Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama ("Rue" to her friends) is bequeathed an unexpected dirigible, she does what any sensible female under similar circumstances would do -- she christens it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Soon, she stumbles upon a plot involving local dissidents, a kidnapped brigadier's wife, and some awfully familiar Scottish werewolves. Faced with a dire crisis (and an embarrassing lack of bloomers), Rue must rely on her good breeding -- and her metanatural abilities -- to get to the bottom of it all. . . External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Buried Life Andrea Goldsmith 2025 The Buried Life (2025) by Australian writer Andrea Goldsmith has an orphan character at the centre of the story. Through 3 characters, Goldsmith explores ideas of uncertainty, friendship, love and death. One of those is 43-year-old Professor Adrian Moor—called Dr Death by his colleagues—who is a well-regarded scholar in Death Studies; he is interested in the social & cultural aspects of death. Adrian Moor was orphaned as a young boy but insists that this early tragedy hasn’t influenced him as a man. Yet he keeps quiet about his childhood, not even telling friends what happened, that he was raised by his grandparents. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Name Is Why Lemn Sissay 2020 At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. External Website

Television Shows Shameless 2011 British screenwriter Paul Abbott (b. 1960) was in both kinship care & foster care as a child https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/paul-abbott Paul Abbott’s most successful TV series is the critically acclaimed drama, Shameless. The television series is largely based on his own life and the British version ran for 11 seasons beginning in 2004. In the American version of Shameless (2011-2021) - also critically acclaimed – in Season 3, Child Protective Services are called on the Gallagher family and some of the children are forced into foster care. Eventually the eldest Gallagher daughter, Fiona, becomes the legal guardian of the younger children because of their parents’ neglect. External Website

Television Shows The Last Thing He Told Me (TV series) 2023 The Last Thing He Told Me is an American mystery television series (on Apple) based on the popular novel by the same name by Laura Dave. Hannah Hall (Jennifer Garner) is the protagonist of The Last Thing He Told Me. She was raised in the kinship care of her grandfather and, like him, is a wood turner. When Hannah’s husband, Owen Michaels (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), goes missing, Hannah is left with the responsibility for her 16-year-old step-daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice). The two go looking for Owen and uncover the truth about Bailey’s mother’s death. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Whispering Hope Steven O'Riordan 2015 In this volume, Steven O'Riordan has gathered the stories of 5 women who were incarcerated in Magelene Laundries during the 20th century. The women- Nancy, Kathleen, Diane, Marie & Marina - tell their stories for first the time – not only of being in the Laundries butof how they moved forward in life, told their stories and revealed a dark chapter in Ireland’s history. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Taboo Kim Scott 2017 Taboo (2017) by Kim Scott is set around Albany in the rural South-West region of Western Australia. It tells the story of a group of Aboriginal Australians who visit—some for the first time—a taboo place, the site of a 19th century massacre. At the centre of the story is Tilly, a teenager who has only recently become aware of her Aboriginal heritage. Tilly was fostered briefly by the Hortons when she was a baby. Dan Horton owns a farm called Kokanarup where the massacre happened. Dan is hosting Noongar people on his farm and is thus honouring the memory of his wife who wanted the establishment of a Peace Park. By the time Tilly returns to Kokanarup she has been made a ward of the WA state and is boarding school. External Website