Writers Eleanor Roosevelt One time first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), was in kinship care as a child. Eleanor's mother died in 1892 and her father in 1894. Thereafter, Eleanor was in the care of her maternal grandmother who sent Eleanor to a boarding school in England when the girl was 15. Eleanor married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a cousin, in 1905. For 12 years she took care of her husband and 5 children, but after her husband became ill with polio, Eleanor became more active in public life. As first lady from 1933 to 1945, she was influential in improving the lives of women. After her husband died in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt continued in public life. She was appointed to the United Nations by President Truman and she was influential in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prolific writer, writing about civil rights in the 1930s and publishing 28 books from 1932. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Place Sally Morgan 2010 Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture. Sally Morgan traveled to her grandmother’s birthplace, starting a search for information about her family. She uncovers that she is not white but Aboriginal—information that was kept a secret because of the stigma of society. This is a classic of Australian literature that finally frees the tongues of the author’s mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories of being taken from their parents. External Website

Writers Rico Hinson-King Rico Hinson-King originally wrote his story "Strong and Tough" during homework club at Manchester City FC in 2020 based on his own experience of being fostered and then adopted. He went on to win the Premier League Young Writer of the Year competiton. He plays for the U13s at Manchester City football club. His second book Football is for Everyone: A heart-warming story about bravery and inclusivity was published in 2024 and is illustrated by Nick Sharrat. External Website

Radio & Podcast Coco Chanel The Scandal Mongers Podcast 2024 French fashion designer Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel (1883-1971) was in an orphanage as a child. In this video, English biographer and social historian, Anne De Coucy speaks about Coco Chanel and her astonishing rise from orphanage kid to one of the best known women in France. Anne De Coucy also scotches long standing views of Chanel as pro-Nazi. External Website

Television Shows The Alienist 2018 The Alienist (2018-2020) is an adaptation of Caleb Carr’s historical thriller novels which include the character of Laszlo Kreizler who runs a home for orphaned/abandoned children in 19th century New York City and Stevie Taggart, a boy Kreizler has taken into his care. In the 1st season, the 10 episodes tell the story of 1994 novel The Alienist, which is set in 1896 and investigates the deaths of teenage boys. In the 2nd season, the 8 episodes tell the story of an investigation into the deaths of babies & children by serial killer Elspeth Hunter. Daniel Bruhl stars as Laszlo Kreizler, Luke Evans as John Morr and Dakota Fanna as Sara Howard. Matt Lintz plays Stevie Taggert in Season 1, and Dominic Herman-Day in Season 2. External Website

Writers Eleanor Roosevelt ➝ Christopher Wordsworth ➝ Joseph Conrad ➝ Norman Lewis ➝ Charles Willeford ➝ Eric Hobsbawm ➝ Glenyse Ward ➝ Hugh Leonard ➝ Jack London ➝ Doris Kartinyeri ➝ Doreen Kartinyeri ➝ Elizabeth Anionwu ➝ Leslie Baruch Brent ➝ Jim Tully ➝ Leslie Thomas ➝ Edgar Wallace ➝ Anthony Burgess ➝ Jackie Kay (writer) ➝ Angela Carter ➝ Gene Siskel ➝ Ernest J. Gaines ➝ Paula Fox ➝ Lesley Pearse ➝ Phil Frampton ➝ Paula McLain ➝ Kirsty Capes ➝ Bertrand Russell ➝ Michael McCarthy ➝ Gertrude Stein ➝ Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) ➝ Sheilah Graham ➝ Jeanette Winterson ➝ Bryce Courtenay ➝ Lisa Cherry ➝ Langston Hughes ➝ Paul Nurse ➝ Ishbel Holmes ➝ Kate Shayler ➝ Stella Dadzie ➝ Mary Douglas ➝ Louise Allen ➝ J.M. Barrie ➝ Jill Roe ➝ Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie ➝ Richard B McKenzie ➝ Nancy Reagan ➝ AUTHORS X ➝ Gabriel Garcia Marquez ➝ Kathryn Harrison ➝ Philip Pullman (writer) ➝ J. R. R. Tolkien ➝ Edward Gibbon (writer) ➝ Alan Dapré ➝ Paolo Hewitt ➝ Tom Mackenzie ➝ Stacey Patton ➝ Dorothy Wordsworth ➝ Antwone Fisher (writer) ➝ Ronald Wilson ➝ Catherine Cookson ➝ Alan Johnson ➝ Henry Darger (writer) ➝ Harriet Martineau ➝ Rob Watts ➝ Michel Houellebecqu ➝ AUTHORS Z ➝ Deidre Michell ➝ Jean Genet ➝ John Sutherland ➝ Martyn Percy ➝ Chris Wild ➝ Sharon Saltzberg ➝ Deborah Levy ➝ Nina Bawden ➝ Richard Wright ➝ Hermann Hesse ➝ Keith Saha ➝ Wayne Dyer ➝ Oprah Winfrey ➝ Jean-Jacques Rousseau ➝ Jane Austen ➝ Maya Angelou (Writer) ➝ AUTHORS Y ➝ The Right Honorable Lord Andrew Adonis PC ➝ Ruth Westheimer ➝ Alex Wheatle ➝ Barack Obama ➝ Kate Adie ➝ Charles Nalden CBE ➝ Henry Fielding ➝ Mannix Flynn ➝ AUTHORS I ➝ Michael Fuller QPM ➝ Stieg Larsson ➝ Rico Hinson-King ➝ Martin Buber ➝ Herbert Hoover ➝ Alan Duff ➝ René Descartes ➝ Patricia Highsmith ➝ Philip Melanchthon ➝ Andy McNab ➝ Annie Besant ➝ Roger Dean Kiser ➝ Louise Beech ➝ Lemn Sissay ➝ Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson ➝ Soren Sveistrup ➝ Yukio Mishima ➝ AUTHORS Q ➝ Elizabeth Bowen ➝ James O'Brien ➝ George Sand ➝ Charles Ignatius Sancho ➝ Lucy Maud Montgomery ➝ Truman Capote ➝ Augusten Burroughs ➝ Nadia Wheatley ➝ Dennis Leoutsakas ➝ Patricia Cornwell (writer) ➝ Pam Weaver ➝ Stephanie Shirley ➝ David Hill ➝ J. Luke Wood ➝ James MacVeigh ➝ Frank Norman ➝ Walter Tevis ➝ Shannon Burns ➝ James Michener ➝ P. G. Wodehouse ➝ Barbara Sumner (Writer) ➝ Kenneth Grahame ➝ Julian the Apostate ➝ Walter Scott ➝ John Masefield ➝ AUTHORS V ➝ Jenni Fagan ➝ Jan de Hartog ➝ Bernard Smith (art historian) ➝ Richard Hoggart ➝ Sally Bayley ➝ Somerset Maugham ➝ Elizabeth Gaskell ➝ Isaac Newton ➝ Rita Mae Brown ➝ Leo Tolstoy ➝ Rosie Canning ➝ Brandi Morin ➝ Benjamin Zephaniah (writer) ➝ Oliver Sacks ➝ Sumner Locke Elliott ➝ Susannah McFarlane ➝ Alf Taylor ➝ Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Writer) ➝ Louis Esson (poet, journalist) ➝ Billy Connolly (Writer) ➝ Georges Perec ➝ Andi Brierley ➝ Floella Benjamin (writer) ➝ Lorenzo Carcaterra ➝ Derek Owusu ➝ Maree Giles ➝ Rosa Guy ➝ Louise Wallwein ➝ Marianne Weber ➝ Richard Rhodes ➝ William Makepeace Thackeray ➝ Regina Calcaterra ➝ Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati ➝ Joseph Livesey ➝ Henry Morton Stanley ➝ Trent Dalton ➝ Edgar Allan Poe (writer) ➝ Nicky Campbell ➝ Kerry Hudson ➝ Philip Doddridge ➝ Paul Fronczak ➝ Frank Golding ➝ Jenny Diski ➝ Dorothy Thompson ➝ Jean Rhys ➝ Rudyard Kipling ➝ Robert Dessaix ➝ AUTHORS U ➝ Valerie Mason-John ➝ Xiaolu Guo ➝ Rosie Waterland ➝ Arthur Conan Doyle ➝ Janet Hitchman ➝ Charles Dickens ➝ A. M. Homes ➝ Allan Jenkins ➝ Dawn O'Porter ➝ Thomas Merton ➝ Bill Clinton ➝ David Plowman ➝ Charmian London ➝ Saki ➝ Michael Maclear ➝ Leigh Bardugo ➝ Maxim Gorky ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Ragnarok 2020 Ragnarok is a Norwegian drama series that reimagines Norse mythology in the present day. A teenage boy, Magne, is surprised to learn he is the reincarnation of the God, Thor, and he takes up the fight against those destroying the planet. The character Iman Reza, an adoptee with Sri Lankan heritage, is the reincarnation of the goddess Freyja. External Website

Writers Joseph Livesey Joseph Livesey (1794-1884) was orphaned at the age of 7, from which time he lived with his grandfather and an uncle. As an adult, Joseph became involved in local (Preston, Lancashire in England) politics, kicking off the Temperance Movement, publishing a monthly magazine The Moral Reformer (1831-1883) for 4 years, and then The Struggle as he agitated against the Corn Laws. In 1844 Joseph set up the Preston Guardian (which is still going but is now the Farmers Guardian), the Teetotal Progressionist in August 1851 (which lasted until May 1852), and the Staunch Teetotaller which lasted 2 years. In addition to many tracts (short treatise) and lectures he wrote, Joseph Livesey published his autobiography in 1881. External Website

Writers Leslie Thomas 1931-2014 Leslie Thomas, OBE (22 March 1931 – 6 May 2014) was a Welsh author best known for his comic novel The Virgin Soldiers. Thomas was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. He was orphaned at the age of 12, when his mariner father was lost at sea and his mother died only a few months later from cancer. He was subsequently brought up in a Dr Barnardo's home; the story of this upbringing was the subject of his first, autobiographical, book, This Time Next Week. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lying Beside You Michael Robotham (2022) 2022 Michael Robotham 4 Lying Beside You (2022) is the 3rd in the Michael Robotham Cyrus Haven series. Cyrus Haven is a forensic psychologist who was in kinship care with his grandparents after his older brother murdered his parents and twin sisters. In Good Girl, Bad Girl (2019) he is introduced to Evie Cormac who has been in foster care and is now living in a youth detention centre. The sequel, When She Was Good (2020), included a Care Experienced characters who runs a paedophile ring and another is an enabler who transports children from paedophile to paedophile. With Lying Beside You there are a range of dodgy characters (including a cop and a forensic scientist) in addition to a vengeful serial kidnapper, none of whom have been in informal care or the formal care system. Evie, now living in Cyrus' home, helps to solve the crime. External Website

Poets Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (poet) Eliza Hamilton Dunlop Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880) was raised by her paternal grandmother in Ireland. She migrated to Australia with 2nd husband, Duncan Dunlop in 1838. By the time she was in her teens, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop was already a published poet. Her lament, “The Aboriginal Mother”—published in The Australian on 13 December 1838—was provoked by her outrage at the Myall Creek massacre. On 10 June 1838, around 28 (the total death toll was never established) Wirrayaraay people were slaughtered at Myall Creek Station in NSW. Seven men were publicly hanged for the massacre on 18 December 1838. Unsurprisingly, there was more anger at the execution of British citizens than there was at the slaughter of Wirrayaraay people. But Dunlop was astonished at the backlash against her and her poem. Although she continued to have her poetry published in colonial newspapers, her work was largely neglect after her death in 1880. 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 Dussa and the Maiden's Prayer Walter Jacobsen 1994 Walter Jacobsen reflects on the childhood he spent in the Parkville Children's Home, and in foster care in rural Victoria, South Australia External Website

Writers Robert Dessaix Robert’s birth mother, Yvonne, was coerced by her mother into giving up her baby in 1944.Jean and Tom Jones adopted Yvonne’s baby son and took him back to their home in Lane Cove on Sydney’s north shore. They were an older working couple, and they loved their son. As a child and on into his adulthood Robert studied Russian, eventually teaching this at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. For ten years from 1985, Robert Dessaix presented the weekly ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National program 'Books and Writing'. He became a full time writer in 1995. Robert Dessaix was into his 30s before he located his birth mother. He’d always known that he was adopted, Jean and Tom were open about that, but living in Melbourne after his marriage had collapsed he decided it was time “to do something about Yvonne” and so he wrote to her. This was the beginning of a continuing gentle relationship between the two. External Website

Writers AUTHORS Q External Website

Children's Fiction Homecoming: Volume 1 Cynthia Voight 2012 “It’s still true.” That’s the first thing James Tillerman says to his older sister, Dicey, every morning. It’s still true that their mother has abandoned the four Tillermans in a mall parking lot somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. It’s still true that they have to find their own way to Great-aunt Cilla’s house in Bridgeport. It’s still true that they need to spend as little as possible on food and seek shelter anywhere that is out of view of the authorities. It’s still true that the only way they can hope to all stay together is to just keep moving forward. Deep down, Dicey hopes they can find someone to trust, someone who will take them in and love them. But she’s afraid it’s just too much to hope for.... Originally published 1973 External Website

Films/Videos Easy A 2010 Easy A (stylized as easy A) is a 2010 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Will Gluck, written by Bert V. Royal, starring Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci, and others The screenplay was partially inspired by the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Olive Prendergast is an average student until rumours fly that she has had sex. Teen comedy about peer pressure. Olive has an adopted brother which is very normalised. In one scene, it gets mentioned by the brother and the father has this whole silly speech asking who told him and how they were going to keep it a secret. Quite clearly a family joke. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Borrowed Findery Paula Fox 2001 When Paula Fox was born to 19 year old Elsie and her partner, Paul - both screenwriters - she was immediately put into a foundling hospital. Paula's maternal grandmother, however, retrieved the baby and so began a nomadic childhood for Paula as she was moved around from foster care to kinship care and back again. Paula Fox reflects on this unusual childhood from the perspective of being in her 70s and after a late starting but long career as a successful writer. External Website

Actors Tiffany Haddish Eritrean-American actor and comedian, Tiffany Haddish (1979) was in residential, foster and kinship care as a child. Tiffany Haddish was born in Los Angeles, California. She was around 3 years old when her father, a refugee from Eritrea, abandoned the family. When Tiffany was nearly 9, her mother, Leola, had a car accident and suffered brain damage which made it difficult to care appropriately for her children. Tiffany therefore spent several years in the foster care system from the age of 12 or 13 before going to stay with her grandmother. Tiffany’s social worker encouraged the girl to attend the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp to learn how to do stand-up comedy. Haddish credits the Comedy Camp with having changed her life. After guest-starring on several television series, Haddish gained prominence with her role as Nekeisha Williams on the NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show. After appearing in the 2016 comedy film Keanu, her breakthrough came in 2017 with her role as Dina in the comedy film Girls Trip, for which she garnered critical acclaim. In 2017, she published her memoir, The Last Black Unicorn.Haddish currently stars in the TBS series The Last O.G. and recently voiced Tuca in the Netflix animated series Tuca & Bertie. External Website

Sport Colin Kaepernick Colin Kaepernick African American Colin Kaepernick (b. 1987) was adopted into a white family when he was a baby. He moved with his family from Wisconsin to California at the age of 4 and began playing sport at the age of 8. In high school he played football, basketball and baseball and excelled in all codes. Wanting to play football, he accepted a scholarship from the University of Nevada in 2006 and he began playing professional football in 2011. He played with the San Francisco 49ers for 6 years. Colin Kaepernick is the recipient of many awards including a 2018 WEB Du Bois Medal from Harvard University. External Website