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Authors L Edmonia Lewis ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Interview with Jilly Cooper 2006 One of the main characters in Wicked is Paris Alvaston who is in care. This interview sheds some interesting light on Cooper's motivation for creating this character. At Bagley Hall, a chaotic yet elite school, headmaster Hengist Brett-Taylor schemes to merge with failing Larkminster Comprehensive. Financial motives clash with forbidden attraction, wary parents, rebellious staff, and students ready for mayhem. External Website

Academic Articles Fostered Voices: Narratives of US Foster Care Nikky Greer 2019 Fostered Voices: Narratives of US Foster Care is a PhD thesis by Nikky R Greer submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in December 2019. In her study, Nikky Greer has used an anthropological approach to examining the foster care system, including interviews with those involved. She argues that saying the foster care system is “broken” assumes that the system is there to “help and support families and children.” Instead, she shows that what the system is all about is, its “most basic function is to shape, control and reform its subjects into compliant neoliberal citizens”. External Website

Authors C Christian Bale unveils plans to build 12 foster homes in California ➝ ‘I lived in a state of terror’: Patricia Cornwell on childhood trauma, her new novel and the search for Bigfoot ➝ Jenni Fagan’s ‘visceral’ memoir of growing up in care wins Gordon Burn prize ➝ After I was taken off my birth parents, my foster carers became the family I needed ➝ The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson review – an elegant retelling of Shakespeare ➝ Almost 70 mass unmarked child graves discovered by ITV News investigation into mother and baby homes ➝ Adoption support charity shreds 'irreplaceable' files to save space ➝ Back to Top

Performing Arts British Singer Mo Jamil Mo Jamil Adeniran (born 25 September 1995) is an British singer. He was born in Nigeria but grew up in Warrington, Cheshire. He was adopted as a three-year-old, but because his adoptive mother was abusive, he was removed from her at the age of eight and went into foster care. Mo Jamil rose to fame after winning the sixth series of The Voice UK, where he won a recording contract with Polydor Records. His debut album, titled Evolve, charted at number 36 on the UK Album Charts. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Small Things Like These Claire Keegan 2021 In her novella, Small Things Like These (2021), Claire Keegan tells something about the now infamous Magdalene Laundries. Set in 1985 in a small Irish town, local coal merchant, Bill Furlong, is busy organising deliveries in the period leading up to Christmas. Bill Furlong doesn’t want to believe the negative stories he’s heard about the local Laundry. But one day he delivers coal there and is confronted by the scene of unkempt girls and young women scrubbing a floor. One asks for help: she wants Furlong to take her to the river so she can drown herself. Also confronting Furlong is the knowledge that his mother could have been one of those girls, yet she was kept in employment by Mrs Wilson after her baby was born, and 12 year old Bill Furlong stayed on with Mrs Wilson when his mother died. Small Things Like These won the Orwell Prize in 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. External Website

Authors N Sir Isaac Newton ➝ Back to Top

Academic theses The Orhan Among Us: An Examination of Orphans in Newbery Award Winning Literature April A Mattix 2012 Orphan stories in children’s literature are rich and complex, and they have historically permeated the pages of children’s books. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of orphans as protagonists in children’s award-winning literature through content analysis. This study utilizes all the Newbery Award winning books (1922–2011) as well as the Newbery Honor books of the last decade (2002–2011) to provide a wide and deep swath of novels in order to present both historical perspective and attention to current trends. External Website

Films/Videos A Little Princess (Film) 2020 A Little Princess is a 1995 American family drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Set during World War I, it focuses on a young girl who is relegated to a life of servitude in a New York City boarding school by the headmistress after receiving news that her father was killed in combat. Loosely based upon the 1905 novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this adaptation was heavily influenced by the 1939 cinematic version and takes creative liberties with the original story. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People You Should Be Grateful (book) Angela Tucker 2023 You Should Be Grateful (2023) by American adoptee Angela Tucker centres the experiences of adoptees and shares their stories. The book challenges lingering ideas that adoption is a “fairy tale” experience. Angela Tucker was adopted from the foster care system and in 2022 founded the Adoptee Mentoring Society, a non-profit focused on mentoring “for adoptees, by adoptees”. Tucker says “You Should Be Grateful is a common phrase that adoptees hear. For Tucker, “You Should Be Grateful” is a shaming statement, a microaggression, making it difficult for adoptees to critique their situation or the adoption system External Website

Actors Jane Wyman American actor Jane Wyman (1917-2007) was in foster care as a child. Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in Jackson County Missouri but was left with Emma and Richard Fulks after her parents divorced. Sarah Jane was about 3 at the time. She called herself Sarah Jane Fulks when she started school. In 1936, Sarah Jane Fulks became Jane Wyman and was signed up with Warner Brothers. After performing in many 'B' movies, Wyman was noticed for her work in The Lost Week (1945) although she continued playing supporting roles until she played a rape victim who was also a deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda (1948), for which she won an Oscar. Wyman also starred in a number of television shows and made for television films. She retired in 1962, making only an occasional appearance on television until she was cast as Angela Channing in Falcon Crest, a series which ran from 1981 to 1990 Jane Wyman married future president Ronald Reaga in 1940. He was her 3rd husband. The couple had one daughter, Maureen, in 1941 and they adopted a boy, Michael, in 1945. Jane and Ronald divorced in 1949. External Website

Academic Articles A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care Yujie Zhao, Jacinta Waugh & Philip Mendes 2025 A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care (2025) is a recent publication in Children Australia (30 June 2025, Volume 47, Issue 1). The authors begin by arguing that young people leaving the Australian state care after having been in residential are a vulnerable group & that within that vulnerable group, young women face specific challenges. They conclude that young women leaving residential care do have different experiences compared to young men but they have not usually been the focus of research. External Website

Performing Arts Actor, producer Kamari Roméo Kamari Roméo is an actor, producer, spoken word artist and transgender. Roméo graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019 with a distinction in Producing. He is a multi-disciplinary artist with interests in Psychology, Immersive Entertainment & Applied Theatre. Kamari’s work encourages audiences to be less passive and more engaged through an immersive aesthetic, awakening the audience’s own social responsibility through art that pollinates conversation. Roméo was in foster care and has an adoptive father. When he was 17 and living with his mother he told her he was Trans, she asked him to leave the house within 3 days - this began a journey of living in hostels for 3 years. His mother was diagnosed with cancer in January 2018 and given a year to live; Roméo said they began to repair their relationship but sadly she died within 3 months. He explained that relatives in Zambia referred to him by his bith name and that his trans identity was a secret. Humblebee Creative was founded in May 2019. Producing Credits Include: The Ritual (Battersea Arts Centre/Roundhouse), Urinal Residency (Live Art Development Agency) Television Credits Include: The Split 2 (BBC), Silent Witness (BBC). Theatre credits include: Straight White Men (Southwark Playhouse), Summer in London (Theatre Royal Stratford East) The Bear/The Proposal (Young Vic) Elemental (Bush Theatre), The Jungle Book (Emporium Brighton) and Alice in Wonderland (The Minack Theatre). Toybox is filmed poems – written at ten different ages by five care leavers – form an archive of their experiences. “After my mother died suddenly in April 2018,” says Roméo, “I began to take an interest in the idea of deconstructing my childhood through the perspective of a child, piecing together the memories of my care experience. It suddenly felt more important than ever to delve into my history as a second-generation Zambian immigrant, growing up in England, playing with Chinese toys and watching American TV to figure out what parts of my multicultural upbringing I would hold on to as an adult out of the system. Through my mentorship with arts collective Lyrix Organic, I wanted to dissect how I could use poetry as a tool to communicate empathy, forgiveness and worth.” External Website

Authors N Nubia: Real One ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Stolen Child Sanjida Kay 2017 Zoe and Ollie Morley tried for years to have a baby and couldn't. They turned to adoption and their dreams came true when they were approved to adopt a little girl from birth. Mother drug addict - Father unknown. Now seven-years old Evie is a happy child who loves her adoptive parents and her two-year old little brother. But this begins to change when she starts to wonder about her birth parents. External Website

Films/Videos Oliver & Company 1988 Oliver & Company (1988) is an American animated musical produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The film is loosely based on Charles Dicken’s novel, Oliver Twist (1839). It tells the story of a homeless kitten in New York City joining a gang of street dogs. The dogs include Dodger and are owned by Fagin, the bargeman and petty thief. Eventually, the kitten is taken in by a child who names him Oliver. External Website

Authors S East West Street ➝ Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Clark 2022 An explanation for the origin of the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, forms part of the drama series Clark on Netflix. Clark includes the events of the 1973 Norrmalmstorg, Sweden heist during which a hostage rings the Prime Minister and says she feels safer with the bank robbers than with the police. The hostages went so far as to, apparently, raise money for their captors when the robbers were finally apprehended. Criminologist and psychiatrist, Nils Bejerot, coined the phrase ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ when he was asked for assistance by the Stockholm police. The rest of the series tells the story of career criminal Clark Olofsson, (b.1947, played by Bill Skarsgard), who, despite claiming to want freedom, has spent around half of his life in gaol. Clark was in foster care after his brutal father left the family and his mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. External Website

Artists Marina Abramović Marina Abramović (b. 1946) was born in Belgrade. Because her parents were busy with their careers, she lived with her grandmother for 6 years. “Until then,” she writes, “I hardly even knew who my parents were. They were just two strange people who would visit on Saturdays and bring presents. When I was six, my brother was born, and I was sent back to my parents.” Abramović writes of having a very unhappy childhood with her parents. “I grew up with incredible control, discipline, and violence at home. Everything was extreme.” Drawing and performing were ways for her to survive. Despite the difficulties, Marina Abramović remained at home with her parents until she was 29. Marina Abramović eventually moved to Amsterdam. She had several postings to European academies, has given many performances and become known as the “grandmother of performance art” and in 2007, founded the Marina Abramović Institution, a non-profit foundation for performance art. External Website

Authors M The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood ➝ Roots: The eco-Journal ➝ Unbelievable: The shocking truth behind the hit Netflix series ➝ Back to Top