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Poets David O'Brien David O'Brien ​ Australian poet, David O'Brien (b. 1957), spent his childhood in orphanages. David and his three siblings were abandoned by their parents in the late 1950s and made Wards of the (South Australia) State. David grew up in a Catholic orphanage with his brother, later attending a Catholic boarding school. The boys were separated from their two sisters.David has had a varied career, including working as a model. He's been living in the Blue Mountains, NSW, for more than 20 years. Two years ago he set up the Blackheath Community OpShop. Encouraging men to live in a more peaceful way - with other humans and with the earth - is the theme running through his 2014 book, A Hunbler Mankind. External Website

Authors Y Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey ➝ Back to Top

Performing Arts Tricky (Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws) Tricky (Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws) ​ "Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws (b. 27 January 1968), better known by his stage name Tricky, is a British record producer and rapper. Tricky experienced a difficult childhood in Knowle West, an economically deprived area in Southern Bristol. He became involved in crime at an early age, and joined a gang that was involved in car theft, burglary, fights and promiscuity. Tricky spent his youth in the care of his grandmother, who often let him watch old horror films instead of going to school. At the age of 15, he began to write lyrics (""I like to rock, I like to dance, I like pretty girls taking down their pants"" MixMag, 1996). At 17, he spent some time in prison after he purchased forged £50 notes from a friend, who later informed the police. Tricky stated in an interview afterward: ""Prison was really good. I'm never going back"". Tricky is one of the most original music artists to emerge from the UK in the past 30 years. His signature sound, coupled with deep, questioning lyrics, took the UK by storm in the early 1990s and was part of the soundtrack that defined the post-rave generation.This unique, no-holds barred autobiography is not only a portrait of an incredible artist - it is also a gripping slice of social history packed with extraordinary anecdotes and voices from the margins of society. Tricky examines how his creativity has helped him find a different path to that of his relatives, some of whom were bare-knuckle fighters and gangsters, and how his mother's suicide has had a lifelong effect on him, both creatively and psychologically. With his unique heritage and experience, his story will be one of the most talked-about music autobiographies of the decade." External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Finding Neverland James Graham 2012 Music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and a book by James Graham adapted from the 1998 play The Man Who Was Peter Pan by Allan Knee. A musical exploring the relationship between playwright JM Barrie (1860-1937) and the Davies family who inspired Barrie to create Peter Pan. Barrie was a guardian of the Davies boys after their mother died. External Website

Performing Arts Deborah Frances White Deborah Frances-White ​ Deborah Frances-White is a London-based comedian, author and screenwriter who also delivers corporate seminars. Frances-White was born in Australia and adopted at ten days old. She grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. Her family converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was a teenager; Frances-White has since left the community and describes herself as an atheist and moved to London. Her BBC Radio 4 series 'Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice' won her a Writers Guild Award. Her film 'Say My Name' was out in spring 2019. She is developing a play for the Almeida, a television series with Merman for Netflix and she recently finished the screenplay for her second film Making Babies for Redwave Films. Her book The Guilty Feminist was published by Virago in 2021. External Website

Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ​ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was the youngest of 10 children. When his father, the Reverend John Coleridge, died in 1781, 9 year old Samuel was taken to London by a family friend and enrolled in Christ's Hospital, an orphanage and boarding school established to provide for the city's poorest children. Samuel didn't visit his family home in Devon until he was almost 17 years old. Samuel Coleridge went on to Cambridge University, courtesy of a scholarship and unusually for a Christ's Hospital alumnus, but left after 3 years without completing a degree. While living in Stowey, Somerset in 1797 for 2 years, Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth and the 2 became founders of Romanticism, an literary and intellectual movement which emphasised the individual and their experiences. In 1799 Coleridge and Wordsworth published the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems which includes one of Coleridge's best known poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge lived with Dr James Gillman from 1823, after he'd initially sought help from Dr Gillman with his opium addiction. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature the following year. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Alone in the world | The Spectator Philip Hensher 2018 A review of Jeremy Seabrook's book, Orphans: A History External Website

Films/Videos The Girl in the Spider's Web (film) ​ 2018 The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) is an action thriller which is based on the eponymous novel by David Lagercrantz, who using characters - including Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy)- developed by Stieg Larsson. The film has a young Lisbeth leaving the family home to get away from her predatory father. As an adult, Salander is a vigilante hacker who becomes entangled with 'the Spiders', a criminal organisation formed by the sister Lisbeth left behind. External Website

Films/Videos Good Will Hunting ​ 1997 A mathematical genius, Will Hunting is discovered working as a janitor at MIT. The young man is mentored by an MIT professor and the story follows Will as he goes to therapy and learns to reevaluate his relationships - past ones in foster care and current ones with his best friend and girlfriend. External Website

Films/Videos Sunshine Christmas ​ 1977 Sunshine Christmas (1977) A musician, brooding over the marriage of his sometime girlfriend, decides to take his adopted daughter home to Texas to celebrate Christmas with his family. While there, he begins to rekindle the relationship he once had with his childhood girlfriend. External Website

Performing Arts Ronnie Archer-Morgan Ronnie Archie-Morgan ​ Ronnie Archer-Morgan was born in 1951. During an episode of BBC's Antiques Roadshow in 2017 Ronnie Archer Morgan met a collector, Sue, who had brought the Sooty and Sweep glove puppets along. Sue's father had owned these two puppets. He had had a long connection with The Sooty Show and Harry Corbett (1918-1989) as he had made props for the show for twenty years. The programme itself was first screened in 1948 and is still thought to be the longest running children’s programme. For Ronnie, the show was a big part of his early life. The young Ronnie actually met Harry Corbett. This was when the famed TV presenter visited the children’s home in Merseyside, back in 1955. Ronnie became quite emotional as it brought back memories of the time he spent in the Children’s home. He said of the famous Harry Corbett – “when he came to my home I had the privilege of him sitting next to me and he let him play with his puppets. Harry Corbett sat next to me, and he let me put these puppets on my hand. And I do often think about it, and how charmed I was to be privileged enough to the things that most inspired me, and made my world go round, Sooty and Sweep, when I was five years old...They charmed generations of children in an age that seems, at this distance, far more innocent." Following the episode, a letter came from a foster family who had cared for Ronnie on weekends. The letter included a photograph of Ronnie with long lost friend, Anna, when the two were around 4 or 5 years of age. Anna, now living in New Zealand, came to England later that year for an “extraordinary” reunion. The two children had been inseparable in the children’s home, but one day Ronnie was removed and the children had no way of staying in contact. Prior to becoming a presenter on Antiques Roadshow, Ronnie Archer-Morgan had careers as a DJ, a laboratory technician, and a hairdresser. During his lunch hour, he would duck out to purchase items from local antique shops, bring them back to the hair dressing salon and show them to his many celebrity clients, often making money from on-selling the items. External Website

Films/Videos The Harder They Fall ​ 2021 The Harder They Fall (2021) is a Western with a vigilante orphan character. Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) is 11 when his parents are murdered. 20 years later, Nat Love has his own gang and he seeks out and kills one of the culprits. The Harder They Fall is billed as revisionist history and features an ensemble cast of Black actors. It is based on the historical characters of Nat Love and Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). External Website

Performing Arts Larry Grayson Larry Grayson ​ Larry Grayson (1923-1995) was born William Sully White to 29-year-old Ethel White in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Unmarried and under pressure from her parents to give her baby up for adoption, Ethel chose instead to organise foster care for him. Ethel advertised, and Alice and Jim Hammond from Nuneaton, northern Warwickshire, responded. Jim was a miner and Alice a homemaker. They already had 2 teenage girls, Mary (known as May) and Florence (known as Fan), but they’d always wanted a boy. When Billy was 6, his foster mother, Alice Hammond, died. Fan, who had left school at 14 and been working for 6 years, gave up her job to look after Billy and her father (May had already left home when she got married at 22). Ethel arranged work in Earl Shilton, around 14km north- east of Nuneaton. Each Wednesday afternoon, her afternoon off, Ethel took the bus to visit her boy Billy. When he was older, it was Billy who would go visit Ethel and spend a whole day with her fortnightly. Billy Hammond, as Ethel’s son was known in Nuneaton, was interested in performing on stage from the age of 5. He organised temporary stages at home and co-opted his friends to perform with him. His first professional gig was at the age of 14 at The Fife Street Working Men’s Club, where he sang 2 songs at a wedding reception. From then he had regular performances in working men’s clubs in the area. Billy’s first stage name was Billy Breen, but with the encouragement of an agent, he changed that to Larry Grayson in 1956. He earned a decent living but stayed on at his childhood home in Nuneaton. Larry Grayson didn’t make it to the “big time” until he was in his 50’s when he was signed up by television executive Michael Grade. Larry Grayson went on to present his own shows, Shut That Door and the Larry Grayson Show. Later he hosted The Generation Game from 1978 to 1982. From the late 1980s Larry Grayson rarely had television work. His final performance was in the 1994 Royal Variety Performance. According to biographer, Tony Nicolson, Larry was a forerunner of gay comedians such as Alan Carr and Graham Norton. But for a time, from the late 1980s until shortly after his death, Larry Grayson was seen as too “politically incorrect” for gay rights activists and too mainstream for media executives. External Website

Radio & Podcast Each and Every Child Each and Every Child 2023 Each and Every Child aims to tell a new story about care experience in Scotland - to shift public attitudes and improve life chances #KeepThePromise. Working with Frameworks Institute to create an evidence-based training toolkit for organisations to support reframing communications. A key part of Each and Every Child’s work is to raise awareness of reframing and it’s potential to change the lives of people who have experience of care across Scotland. To do this, we have developed a suite of free reframing training sessions that will support organisations and individuals to understand and embed the reframing toolkit recommendations into their work. External Website

Films/Videos White Oleander (film) ​ 2021 White Oleander is a 2002 American drama film directed by Peter Kosminsky. Fifteen-year-old Astrid Magnussen (Alison Lohman) is living in Los Angeles with her mother, the free-spirited artist Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer). Since her father left before she was old enough to remember him, Astrid depends heavily upon her passionate but largely self-centered mother's care. Ingrid's current relationship with a writer named Barry (Billy Connolly) ends when she discovers he is cheating on her with younger women. After she murders him with a poison made from white oleander, Ingrid is arrested and sentenced to life in prison, leaving Astrid under the care of the state of California. Astrid is sent to live with foster mother Starr Thomas (Robin Wright), a former stripper who is a recovering alcoholic and born-again Christian. External Website

Radio & Podcast Malik and Mark Descendants 2021 In the first half of this episode, Care Experienced poet and performer, Malik Al Nasir talks about his journey to Guyana and finding family members, and his tracing his heritage back to both slave owners and to slaves. External Website

Non Fiction Abby's Story Louise Allen 2020 Abby's Story is the latest book in the series Thrown Away Children by author and foster mum Louise Allen. Abby is suddenly removed from her adoptive family and taken into foster care. She has challenging behaviours that her foster mother finds difficult to imagine the origin of. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Smell like a woman, not a rose’: Chanel No. 5 100 years on, an iconic fragrance born from an orphanage Gary Mortimer 2021 When Marilyn Monroe was asked, “What do you wear to bed?”, she famously replied, “Just a few drops of No. 5″. Monroe was perhaps the most famous 'care experienced' fan of the French perfume celebrating its 100th birthday next month. Since it was launched by Coco Chanel on May 5, 1921, Chanel No.5 has endured in popularity. Indeed, in 2019 an estimated 1.92 millon women purchased a bottle in Great Britain alone. Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, on August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France. After her mother died, Chanel was sent at the age of 12 to the Abbey of Aubazine Orphanage in Corrèze. External Website

Authors R The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Geogia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption ➝ Back to Top

Poetry The Gift of Experience Your Life Your Story 2021 The Gift of Experience anthology, was published as a tribute to care experienced poet Yusuf Paul McCormack who died in 2021. The anthology features poetry from mainly care experienced voices. External Website