Search Results

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles I believed I was an orphan - Australians caught up in global adoption scandal Sydney Morning Herald 2025 The agency that facilitated a number of adoptions from South Korea to Australian families was the Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) based in Seoul, South Korea. A recent South Korean investigation has found a number of human rights violations amongst the complaints from adoptees from 11 countries, including Australia. Amongst the findings is that some children were falsely recorded as orphans when they weren’t. Other concerns was a lack of consent from biological parents, and adoptive parents not being properly vetted. This article by Lisa Visentin includes the story of Chae Ryan who was adopted by a Queensland couple from South Korea in 1991 and is one of 8 Australian cases still be examined by the South Korean inquiry. Some adoptees are calling for an Australian inquiry into the scandal. External Website

Films/Videos The Proposal 2009 The Proposal is a 2009 American romantic comedy film. The plot centers on a Canadian executive who learns that she may face deportation from the U.S. because her visa renewal application was denied. Determined to retain her position as editor-in-chief of a publishing house, she convinces her long-suffering personal assistant to temporarily act as her fiancé. It transpires 'Margaret Tate's' parents died when she was 16, and she is portrayed as unable to have romantic relationships. External Website

Radio & Podcast Voices in Action Voices in Action 2020 Voices in Action is the initiative of CREATE Foundation, an advocacy organisation for children and young people in the care of the Australian state. In response to ongoing stigma and disadvantage experienced by many in the care system, CREATE's Snap That Stigma Campaign highlights achievements and diversity of the young people. In this podcast, young people interview each other about their experiences in the care system, with stigma, and with challenging that stigma. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Meera Mistry Meera Mistry 2021 Meera Mistry, a care-experienced Associate Director at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. Meera spent her teenage years in foster care. She was placed in families from different cultures and backgrounds which she says has 'given me a unique perspective'.  She is a Trustee at Become Charity. 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

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Foundling (2022) Ann Leary 2022 It’s 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She’s immediately in awe of her employer—brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women’s suffrage. Now, at age forty, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care. Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret? Mary’s decision triggers a hair-raising sequence of events with life-altering consequences for all. Inspired by a true story about the author’s grandmother, The Foundling offers a rare look at a shocking chapter of American history. External Website

Films/Videos The Sea Beast 2022 The Sea Beast (2022) is an animated adventure film which tells the story of a young orphan girl - Maisie Brumble - who runs away from an orphanage and stows onboard the ship of a group of sea monster hunters. Captain Crow is the captain and he has an adopted son, Jacob Holland. Crow is financially supported by the Crown to hunt sea beasts. Maisie decides that the sea beasts shouldn't be hunted and that if they attack a ship, they do so in self-defense. External Website

Television Shows Will Trent (TV series) 2022 Will Trent is the creation of Karen Slaughter, an American crime writer. He was a foundling who grew up in the harsh environment of the Atlanta Children’s Home. He now has a university degree and works as a Special Agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The television series based on Karen Slaughter books featuring Will Trent was released on 3 January 2023 with Will Trent played by Ramon Rodriguez. External Website

Television Shows Belgravia Belgravia is a historical drama based on the 2016 novel by Julian Fellowes. A successful businessman and his wife give up their grandson (born out of wedlock ostensibly) to foster care rather than risk their reputation. 26 years later, the grandson is a successful businessman in his own right. He is introduced to his paternal grandparents, the aristocratic Brockenhurst's, and becomes heir to a title and a fortune. External Website

Television Shows Gone for Good Gone for Good (2020) is a French language drama series on Netflix. It's based on Harlen Corben's 2002 novel of the same name. Central to the story is bad boy Fred Lucchesi whose father saves him from a stint in youth detention by setting up one of Fred's friends, an oft bullied boy from a poor background, to take the fall. At the end of the series, Fred's small daughter goes into kinship care with his brother, Guillaume, a youth worker and decent guy. External Website

Writers Alan Johnson As a teenager, Alan Johnson (b. 1950) nurtured a desire to become a writer. Born into poverty, he put that off for work that enabled him to support himself and his family. He ended up becoming an MP and served in the UK parliament from 1997 to 2017. After the success of his first memoir, This Boy, Johnson went on to write a 2nd volume, Please, Mister Postman (2014) about his time as both a postman and a union official. In 2016 he published The Lond and Winding Road which talked about his time as a politician. This was followed in 2018 by In My Life: A Music Memoir, in which Johnson talks about his lifelong enthusiasm for music. And last year, Johnson published his first work of fiction, The Late Train to Gipsy Hill, a thriller. It took a while for Alan Johnson to achieve that childhood dream, but he made it! External Website

Radio & Podcast John Lennon - Part 2: Joined to Yoko on Apple Podcasts Personology ‎Show Personology, Ep John Lennon - Part 2: Joined to Yoko - Apr 27, 2020 External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Careful, He Might Hear You (novel) Sumner Locke Elliott 1963 A small boy is living in kinship care with one aunt after his mother dies in childbirth birth. This story is the tussle between two aunts for the custody of the child. Autobiographical External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Kiss Kathryn Harrison 1997 American writer Kathryn Harrison (b. 1961) was raised in the kinship care of her grandparents from the age of 6. Harrison was born in Los Angeles, California. Her young parents divorced when Kathryn was 6 months old. At the time, Kathryn and her mother were living with the maternal grandparents and they stayed there until, when Kathyn was 6 years old, her mother left home. In The Kiss (1997) Harrison talks about the absence of her father after her parents’ divorce. She saw him once when she was 10 and then again when she was about 20, after which she and her father embarked on an incestuous ‘affair’. External Website

Academic Articles Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories Craig Evans 2019 People who spent time in public care as children are often represented as ‘care leavers’. This paper investigates how ‘care leaver’ is discursively constructed as a group identity, by analyzing 18 written personal experience stories from several charity websites by people identified or who self-identify as care leavers. Several approaches to narrative analysis are used: a clause-level analysis based on Labovʼs code scheme; the identification of turning points; an analysis of ‘identity work’; and an analysis of subject positions relative to ‘master narratives’. The findings from each of the methods are then combined to reveal how intertextual, narrative-structural, and contextual factors combine to constitute a common care leaver discourse. This forms the basis for a characterization of ‘care leaver’ group identity as ‘survivors of the system’. The findings also reveal how ‘care leaver’ as type, including stereotype, influences how identity is constructed in the personal experience narratives. External Website

Performing Arts Dancer, Yellow Wiggle Tsehay Hawkins The Wiggles (1991 – ongoing) are a popular Australian children’s music group with an international reach. Yellow Wiggle Tsehay Hawkins joined the group in 2021. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2005, Tsehay Hawkins was adopted in 2006 by Robyn and Reg Hawkins and grew up in a small-town in NSW. From an early age, Tsehay was encouraged to dance and she took up ballet, tap and Jazz. The Hawkins made a point of nurturing Tsehay’s connection to her cultural heritage and she incorporated Ethiopian and West African style dance in her repertoire too. Although Tsehay Hawkins has not been able to find any information about her birth parents, in 2024 she returned to Ethiopia as a keynote speaker for a fundraising event for a local orphanage. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Cloudy Wishes Amanda Gargula 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. External Website

Films/Videos Louis Theroux: Saville 2016 In 2000, British-American documentary maker, Louis Theroux (b. 1970) spent 3 months or so working with the infamous Jimmy Savile (1926-2011) on a documentary about the English media personality, When Louis Met Jimmy (2000) 15 years later, he set out to find out why he was so ‘gullible’, so taken in by Savile that he missed the truth of Savile’s longstanding criminal behaviour. Louis Theroux: Savile (2016) is the result. The film includes interviews with those who were victims of Savile, including Kat who was in state care while at boarding school. It also includes interviews with those who knew and worked with Savile, some of whom still find it hard to believe Savile’s behaviour. External Website

Performing Arts Rapper, singer, songwriter, philanthropist Pitbull Armando Christian Pérez (born 1981), known professionally by his stage name Pitbull, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, brand ambassador, businessman and philanthropist. Pérez was born in Miami, Florida. After his parents separated, he lived with his mother but later stayed with a foster family in Georgia. Perez began his career in the early 2000s, recording reggaeton, Latin hip hop, and crunk music under a multitude of labels. In 2004, he released his debut album M.I.A.M.I. under TVT Records and the executive production of Lil Jon. Pitbull later released his second album, El Mariel, in 2006 and his third, The Boatlift, in 2007. His fourth album, Rebelution (2009), included his breakthrough hit single "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)", which peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the UK Singles Chart. After rebranding himself as a pop artist, Pitbull's next English-language album, Planet Pit, featured his first US number one single "Give Me Everything". His 2013 track from Global Warming: Meltdown, titled "Timber", topped the charts in twenty nations, and hit #1 in eighteen countries, including the US and UK. External Website

Films/Videos Zoey to the Max 2015 Zoey, a 13-year-old foster child, watches her foster family's dog get stolen while she's in charge! The criminals, a pair of "Home Alone"-like thugs, are after the mutt because he is a famous show dog. Zoey heads out on a cross-country adventure with a techy new friend in order to track down the dog and save the relationship with her foster family. Throughout the film Zoey must dig in and fight for the life she's always wanted, undergoing much personal growth in the process. External Website