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Dr. Josie Pearse asks: Why is the murderer (almost) always adopted? I'm talking about a stereotype that I began to notice many many years ago on programmes like The Bill which my dad watched. It was inevitable that if you were over my adoptive parents' house he would settle down at 7 or 7.30 in the evening to watch the longest running police procedural ever. He was one of millions. It was a soap opera really, at a police station with a different crime each episode. You couldn't avoid it. It was perfectly easy TV after work. My mother would mostly disappear to the kitchen and it was my cue to go home. There was money to be made from writing for it. I heard a number of TV writers speak who got their first breaks with The Bill and at one point I decided to stay and watch with my dad, with the idea I might write something. I watched a few. It certainly followed a formula, a rhythym that chugged along with breaks for ads. Learning the formula was clearly necessary so I studied it. But I also began to notice something else. The crime wasn't always murder but when it was, I woke up to how many of the planned ones were committed by adopted or fostered adults. And if, God forbid, a serial killer was loose in Sun Hill then there was no doubt they would be adopted or fostered; none at all. I also noticed there was no other motive or explanation. The adoptees, care survivors, fostered people, killed simply because they didn’t grow up in their natural home. It put me off. I made efforts to counter stereotypes in my job. But adoptees and care-experienced people had not at that time, as far as I am aware, organised about portrayal. I was busy finding my mother and brother, dealing with the fallout in my relationships from reunion. As a group we were fighting for legal changes, for whole files to made available to us, for realism in our searching groups around another stereotype - the reunion story - and for acknowledgement of race to be a factor in adoption. But we had not yet organised about stereotyping. That's had to wait until recently, see Care Experience & Culture. In the job I did - adult literacy - we were conscious of early childhood differences and had regular training sessions for our comfortable, well-meaning volunteers to remind them that not everyone had a happy childhood and we shouldn't assume beginner writers would want to write about theirs. That was about as inclusive as the real world got. TV was years behind and for me, as an adoptee, honestly, I had educated myself and at work I felt part of the privileged world. I did feel annoyed about the murderers though. My antennae were up and I began to notice the stereotype in other TV crime dramas. A stereotype is something that doesn’t change. In studying writing, you learn that character driven plot is largely about the character changing. But these murderers weren't really characters. The police were the characters. The murderer was one dimensional. This was schlock though, so why take it seriously? As I look back it's no stretch to say that the stereotype affected me. I felt I should be grateful. I was lucky to be relatively sane, have a social life, have a job I believed in and get by financially. After all I could have gone to the bad. Not going to the bad was also my compensation and my moral containment. Only later in life have I seen how small my aspirations were. It's a pauper's aspiration. A stereotypical orphan's. As if, despite growing up in a lower middle class home, not going to the bad had to be my main drive and everything else was just a dream. Never mind imposter syndrome, what about unconsciously absorbing-the-bad-news on-every-day-TV syndrome. I can't say this is true for every #cep. But my bet is that staying right, not going bad, whatever it means to each of us, is a big thing we do. But what about the implications of having this stereotype fed into the common consciousness each evening? What effect on the population who switch on the box each evening? The tension is exciting, problems are solved and in the end justice seems to be served but oh, wait...watch out for those people without families... They all end up in prison, right, though. So the world is safe. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries orphans were most often heroes - as they are today in children's books and comics. Without the constraints of parents they were free to get into all kinds of jolly scrapes. Moll Flanders and Tom Jones are not one dimensional, they change and survive everything life throws at them mainly because of their good natures - and despite their parental absence or rottenness. Later in the nineteenth century with the rise of the middle classes, orphans like Oliver Twist were also likely to suffer trials but through their true nature be restored to their rightful (usually middle class or wealthy) place in society. But since the twentieth centry and TV, our most common plotline is that because our parents were dead, dysfunctional, unable...we must be serial killers. I started counting eventually and by my reckoning 90% of TV serial killers were orphans. Even great writers were using this fixed image. Three examples - all by such wonderful writers it pains me to call them out. But in the name of awareness let me do it: The Bridge - great Scandi drama. The plot point at the end means the killer has to have a birth mother. He uses her garage to wall up his victim. The Fall - by the wonderful Paul Abbott: the murderer was ‘fostered in different homes'. No Offence - the plot is about the betrayal of the main character. Beautifully done. But the murderer ‘came from the nuns.’ So why have even great writers succumbed to this laziness? Some of it is perhaps because #ceps have all this complexity in our lives - in The Bridge the killer takes advantage of the invisibility of birth mothers to...commit a series of murders of course. But the main serial killer type seems to stem from some FBI statistics prepared in 1999 and written up in journals ever since. The internet was a baby in 1999, so I imagine some writer's excitement of coming across a journal in a library after an afternoon's search. Of 500 serial killers in the United States, the FBI had found, 16% were adoptees. The figure was big, given that only 2-3% of that population at large was adopted. The problematizing began: the 16% got all the attention. Adoptees were 8 times more likely to be serial killers. On and on...too much to read in journals of social work if your imagination is a scriptwriter's and you have started seeing the possible plot... It’s not uncommon for adopted people to be studied and problematized in the post-Freudian world. The one that always gets my goat into battle mode is the twins separated at birth and adopted by different families. The twins grow up to have identical tastes, or properties. There's only one word for the people who did the ethics review on that study...the people who knew where the two siblings were and studied them rather than reunited them...and the word is not writeable. The point though, surely, now, so many years later, that 84% of serial killers presumably come from average, biological, unseparated families. What about them? Why don't they get portrayed in proportion to their prevalence? There may be all kind of plotting reasons why not but...84% of all people are serial killers.? Shout it from the rooftops! The wider picture has to be that the narrative of the killer adoptee is so acceptable because a normal family is the primary unit of capitalism and we need to reinforce it's importance if this world is to continue on it's jolly, unconscious path to destruction and extinction. Simple really. But it's not simple for people who through no fault of their own have grown up with a wound. For that wound to be explained away without any hope of redemption is rotten and lazy. It's just one more travesty. So come on writers out there, lets look at the 84%. Let's problematize them for a change. Even the right way round: 84% of serial killers are ordinary people, is so much more interesting than the bad blood angle. There is hope. There are exceptions. Jane Campion's second series of Top of the Lake portrays the whole, messy, imperfect, triangle of mother, adoptive mother, adoptive father and teen-aged adoptee. The beauty of it is that...perhaps because I've watched so many... I did suspect the adoptee the whole way through. No spoilers. If you were adopted, over to you, it's on Netflix. You can switch on the box and relax for once.

Amberleigh Care (UK) has two locations which run as formal therapeutic communities for teenage boys: deliberately structured settings that make real use of groups and relationships. Each community has a large children's home, a registered school and a therapy team that works across both communities. There are up to 19 boys on one site and up to 12 on the other. The boys come to stay with us from all over the country and are with us anywhere from 18 months to 6 years. Poetry is always a popular topic for the boys in school because it's a way of expression that they find fun and more free flowing - especially when they can then alter their poems into songs and raps! This time the lesson was based around the NHS graffiti art of Banksy. With the first focus being about how much the NHS is now valued by everyone, the short lessons deepened in thought and reflection to how the boys have had to adapt their lives in lockdown. The poems mention memories, how the world has changed and confusion. The boys are all very proud of their work and have all enjoyed sharing their poems in the school assembly. Each poem brings a small insight to their shared experience. We hope you enjoy them.

Dr Dee Michell reflects on Careless, the new novel from Kirsty Capes It was wonderful to read Careless by Kirsty Capes. I’d had the book on pre-order for ages and was delighted when it finally arrived. It’s a beautifully written novel, one of those where I’m immediately immersed in the story, and I love that. Careless is the tale of 15 year old Bess who is in foster care, has had a relationship – if you can call it that – with a hapless 19 year old called Boy who stacks shelves in a supermarket, and we journey with Bess as she decides what to do next. Friendship, the state care system, and a girl’s right to decide how to live her life are central themes in the novel. There’s the friendship between Bess and her school friend, Eshal, and the later friendship that develops between Bess and Boy’s sister, Keris, and between Bess and her foster sister, 10 year old Clarissa. I was glad when Keris finally took a stand against Boy and stood up for and supported Bess. For much of the book I was concerned no one was talking about statutory rape, but then no one apart from Keris knows who the ‘father’ is. At the other end of the age scale, there is an offering of friendship with the woman who runs the knitting group at the church; at least Bess knows there are women who are non-judgmental and accepting in the local community. The friendship with Eshal was heartwarming (even if the account of the hot bath and gin is horrific). There’s a bit where Bess recognises the difficulties Esh faces – ongoing racism, the threat of forced marriage—and she understands she’s not the only one who has life tough. But the lovingness of Esh’s family toward Esh, and toward Bess, is both a contrast with Bess’ life with Lisa, her foster mum, and a blessing for Bess in that at least there is somewhere she encounters unconditional positive regard. It’s probably not only foster kids who experience love bounded by strict rules. “As long as you live in my house you live by my rules” sort of thing. When Lisa finds out Bess is pregnant, she is happy to keep Bess on, as long as Bess does what Lisa wants. I felt angry and disgusted with Lisa—would she have behaved similarly with her biological daughter? Perhaps she would have, but there are indications otherwise, like the abundance of presents Clarissa receives compared to the sparsity of those for Bess. I related to the story in a number of ways, despite being 50 years older than Bess and in foster care in Australia. Like Bess, I was in the one long term ‘placement’ from the age of 4. When it came to Bess knowing about Lisa being paid to care for the girl, it’s not until Bess objects to Lisa flashing around receipts for reimbursement that Lisa becomes more discreet with collecting evidence of what she has spent. I recall feeling shocked that my mum was paid for 15 years to look after me. I didn’t find that out until I read my files when I was in my 30s and yet I have vague memories of writing to the relevant government agency for funding for extracurricular items, like going on a school trip interstate (request rejected), and I understood mum didn’t cover the cost of high school uniforms because we’d go somewhere other than a shop for those (an agency run store or warehouse?). Still, at some deep level I didn’t understand that allexpenses were covered by the state. On the one hand, I think carers should be paid for their work, although I doubt my mum was paid for her time. I want to say she definitely wasn’t paid to do any emotional labour, but such a term is anachronistic and she shouldn’t have been anyway as I remember her as emotional neglectful and verbally abusive, always finding fault, rather like Lisa picking on Bess relentlessly. On the other hand, and like Bess, kids can feel like commodities if money is all there is about caring for them. The commentary on the different types of social workers was thought-provoking. Henry appeared to be only minimally interested in Bess and was on Lisa’s side when ‘trouble’ loomed. Shelly, however, was emphatically on Bess’ side, encouraging Bess in her idea of becoming a film maker and later supporting her practically to get the requisite skills. I don’t recall social workers being as actively involved in my life as either Henry or Shelley, but given a choice I would have wanted Shelly. I felt quite conflicted through much of the novel. On the one hand I wanted Bess to live life as she wants to, even if that means keeping the baby, and Keris is a positive representation of a young single mum who is doing a good enough job with her child. On the other hand, I didn’t want Bess to keep the baby, I wanted her to do what she’s always wanted to do, learn how to make films. She could have done both, and there are advantages in having babies early, but I didn’t want that for Bess. That internal conflict I felt, my reaction toward Lisa (and even Rory who reminded me a bit of my foster father, hovering benevolently in the background while mum ruled, as Lisa does), my fondness for Eshal, and wish that Bess lives her best life unencumbered by others’ expectations is a measure of Kirsty Capes’ storytelling and writing skills. 5/5 stars from me.

The Care Experience & Culture Digital Archive Launch took place Sunday 11th April. 11.00 - Welcome Dr Dee Michell & Rosie Canning 11.15 - Kenny Murray talks about his call for improved representation of care experience 11.30 - Kirsty Capes will be talking about her debut novel 'Careless' 12.00 - Open forum to reflect on favourite care experience characters 12.20 - Official launch by Polly Jones, Trustee from The Welland Trust (Our thanks to The Welland Trust for their support and Jamie Crabb for website help.)

I know myself better than anyone. Or so I think. People are complicated. Life is complicated. Rather than being a level playing field, life offers up an uneven, inconsistent landscape. Uphill one moment, with a great view. Then stumbling downhill in the dark, wondering which way to go. Adults who should have been there for me when I was in care were conspicuous by their absence. Authority figures came and went, which in some ways is worse. I had eleven social workers and each one solemnly promised to be my last. A promise made purely to reassure a lonely child; a promise to build trust and hope, which made every grown-up’s sudden departure so much harder to take. The adult me knows that such people come and go. They do their best in difficult circumstances. But consistency costs. Money has to be provided to fund essential care services so children and young adults have the best start in life, the best representation. It’s that word again. For representation to mean something it must involve dealing with people as individuals, not stereotypes. It links to how care leavers are viewed in society. A childhood spent in the care system doesn’t - despite what newspapers might say - automatically drop us into ‘victim’, ‘fighter’ or ‘survivor’ mode. Many of us have shown great resilience (another much used word), adapting to change as a necessary part of survival. But what if a child is not resilient? It doesn’t make that person frail or not tough enough. It just means that the system has not worked hard enough or flexibly enough to support and nurture an individual through their formative years. I spent my teenage years shuttling between children’s home and a boarding school that was more Lord of the Flies than Harry Potter. Burnt with candles, made to swing from hot pipes high off the ground, hit with slippers. Who would do that to a child screaming inside, trying to find a voice? Institutions never managed to crush my spirit. I fought back when I could, tried to be calm, kind and a friend to others. But the labelling stuck. Teachers labelled me ‘low ability’, rather than seeing the truth; that numerous distractions were swirling through my childhood years. I remember vowing to show them what I could do. I soon learned one important thing. To ignore the voice in my head that said I wasn’t good enough. At university, I met lifelong friends. Supportive and there for me. I tried to pay on the kindness in the way I communicated with others. It was why I became a primary teacher. To show that children from a care background can be nurturing, thoughtful and a positive influence. Representation is often done on behalf of someone, though it can also be an act of re presentation. Taking on a new form, a different path, a fresh outlook. I wanted to be a representative. An ambassador for myself. To prove that life doesn’t stop when you leave care. It’s the beginning of a personal journey of moving beyond impersonable labels; Children in Care, Care Experienced, Looked After Children, Service Users. Some adults are advocates and represent children in care at decision making meetings with the Local Authority or school. They seek to uphold a child or young person’s legal rights and ensure they are fairly treated. Empathy is important, necessary even, to do their role. It is especially significant when it comes to politics where our political representatives represent people from all walks of life. Members of Parliament make the laws that I live by even though, for many, their lived experiences are vastly different to mine. Life is not a level playing field, remember. The current Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, recently announced that a ban on placing vulnerable children under the age of 16 in unregulated accommodation would come into force in September 2021. He said, ‘Vulnerable children under 16 are too young for the type of accommodation that provides a place to stay but not the care and support that they need.’ Why stop at 15? Where does this law leave slightly older vulnerable young people - children(!) - who are just 16 and 17 years old? Unfortunately, it leaves them in unregulated accommodation, at great risk from the likes of unscrupulous landlords, traffickers and drug gangs. The right representation is important. We all need angels, champions and allies in our lives. Non-judgemental, genuinely caring role models who channel positive perspectives and can help change the course of a young person’s life. Why? So the full story can be told… Alan Dapré March 2021 Alan Dapré is the author of more than fifty books for children. He has also written over one hundred television scripts, transmitted in the UK and around the world. His plays have been on BBC Radio 4 and published for use in schools worldwide. During a turbulent childhood in children's homes, Alan took comfort from stories. "I see books as awesome black holes with infinite possibilities that suck you in and transport you to new worlds. I love their universal appeal." Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlanDapre