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Fiction featuring Care Experience The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead 2020 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2020. The story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'. In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' The tension between Elwood's idealism and friend Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions. Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States. External Website

Films/Videos A Walz Through the Hills (Film) ​ 1988 Two children are orphaned while living in a country pub in the West Australian bush where their mother has been working. They set out to work over 130miles to Perth so they can sail to England and live with their grandparents. External Website

Films/Videos Blonde ​ 2022 Blonde (2022) is based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel of the same name and tells the story of Marilyn Monroe's difficult childhood and rise to fame. Reviews have been mixed, with Mark Kermode (The Guardian) at one end of the spectrum describing it as "a gothic melodrama, a fever dream of childhood trauma" while at the other end, Joyce Carol Oates was reportedly delighted with it. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Where The Dead Sit Talking Brandon Hobson 2018 With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his mother’s years of substance abuse, Sequoyah keeps mostly to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface. At least until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary, a troubled artist who also lives with the family. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Orphans | film by Pakula [1987] Michael Barson 2021 A discussion of various films by Alan Pakula includes his 1987 Orphans, an adaption of his play by Lyle Kessler. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience There Was Still Love Favel Parrett 2019 The story is set in 1980. In Prague, Ludek is being raised by his grandmother and in Melbourne, Mala is being raised by her grandparents. The grandmothers are sisters, but the cousins haven't met. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphan Collector Ellen Marie Wiseman 2020 The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman is set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, 13-year-old German migrant Pia Lange is left with her 4-month old twin brothers after her mother suddenly dies. The chronically shy child manages as best she can until she runs out of food. She then leaves the tiny boys on their own while she scouts neighbouring apartments, without much luck. Venturing outside and into a wealthier area, Pia collapses on the pavement, waking up 6 days later in a church-hospital. A few days later still—when she is finally recovered—Pia is dropped off at an orphanage where she’s put to work looking after babies, all the time feeling anxious and guilty about leaving her brothers and wondering if they’re still alive. External Website

Films/Videos Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story ​ 2003 Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story is an American biographical drama television film directed by Peter Levin. Liz Murray lives with her sister Lisa, drug-addicted, schizophrenic mother Jean almost blind and has AIDS, and their father Peter, also a drug addict who is intelligent, but also has AIDS. He is portrayed has intelligent but lacking in social skills. Liz is removed from the home and placed into the care system as her father cannot take care of her. At 15, she moves in with her mother, sister, and grandfather who sexually abused her mother and her aunt. After a fight with her grandfather who hits her, she runs away with a girl from school named Chris who is being abused at home. After Jean dies of AIDS, Liz is homeless - sleeping in parks, riding the subway all night but manages to go back to high school, which she completes in two years, rather than the usual four. She becomes a star student and through an essay contest sponsored by The New York Times is awarded a full scholarship to Harvard University. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Inheritance Louisa May Alcott 1997 A wealthy English family, the Hamilton's, adopt an orphan who was born in Italy. A long lost letter reveals that she is related to the Hamilton's and has inherited the estate on which she has been living and working as a companion to the Hamilton's daughter. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Ghost River Tony Birch 2015 Archie Kemp knows trouble when he sees it, and he sees it when 13-year-old Sonny Brewer moves in next door. At the beginning of the story Sonny is living with his alcoholic father. By the end of the story, Sonny is in kinship care with his uncle. External Website

Films/Videos Christmas Child ​ 2004 Christmas Child (2004). After his adopted father dies, a mysterious photograph, which may be a clue as to his origins, leads a journalist Jack Davenport (William R. Moses) to a small Texas town at Christmastime. External Website

Films/Videos Collateral ​ 2004 Max, a cab driver finds himself the hostage of Vincent, a contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles. It transpires that Vincent's mother died whilst he was very young. His father was a drunk who beat up Vincent before he ended up in foster care. At one point in the film, Max questions Vincent and uses steretypes: 'What were you? One of those instittionalised guys...the standard part that are supposed to be there in people, in you...arent.' External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphans Annemarie Neary 2018 Eight-year-old Jess and her little brother were playing at the water's edge when their parents vanished. For hours the children held hands and waited for them to return. But nobody ever came back. Years later, Jess has become a locker of doors. Now a lawyer and a mother, she is determined to protect the life she has built around her. But her brother Ro has grown unpredictable, elusive and obsessive. When new evidence suggests that their mother might be alive, Ro reappears, convinced that his sister knows more than she claims. And then bad things start to happen. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience My Name Is Leon Kit de Waal 2017 It's 1981, a year of riots and royal weddings. The Dukes of Hazzard is on TV. Curly Wurlys are in the shops. And trying to find a place in it all is nine-year-old Leon. After his mother's breakdown, he and his little brother Jake are taken into care and live with foster carer Maureen. They've lost one home, but have they found another? Maureen feeds and looks after them. She has wild red hair and mutters swearwords under her breath when she thinks they can't hear. She claims everything will be okay. But will they ever see their mother again? Who are the couple who secretly visit Jake? Between the street violence and the street parties, Leon must find a way to reunite his family... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Devil's Staircase Helen Fitzgerald 2009 In The Devil’s Staircase (2009), there are 2 Care Experienced characters who are central to the story. One has been deported from Australia to the UK for stealing cars and one is a serial killer. External Website

Films/Videos Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot ​ 2018 This film is based on American cartoonist John Callahan's (1951-2010) memoir of the same name. It tells the story of how Callahan became a quadripelegic after a serious a car accident, his recovery from an alcohol addiction (rooted in the pain he felt because he was adopted) and how he became a regular cartoonist for the Portland, Oregan newspaper, Willamette Week. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lessons in Chemistry Bonnie Garmus 2023 Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the 1960s. The problem is, she is the only one who views herself that way. Her male colleagues cannot get past the fact that she's a woman, and treat her more as a secretary and doormat, acknowledging her only long enough to steal her work. That is, until Calvin Evans, another brilliant chemist, comes along and really sees all that she is capable of. Calvin grew up in an orphanage but it is not until his daughter who has a project at school about family investigates Calvins past that the reader finds out more about this aspect of the novel. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Song of the Sea Maid Rebecca Mascull 2016 In the 18th century, Dawnay Price is an anomaly. An educated foundling, a woman of science in a time when such things are unheard-of, she overcomes her origins to become a natural philosopher.Against the conventions of the day, and to the alarm of her male contemporaries, she sets sail to Portugal to develop her theories. There she makes some startling discoveries - not only in an ancient cave whose secrets hint at a previously undiscovered civilisation, but also in her own heart. The siren call of science is powerful, but as war approaches she finds herself pulled in another direction by feelings she cannot control. External Website

Films/Videos Angels & Demons ​ 2009 Angels & Demons is a 2009 American mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, based on Dan Brown's 2000 novel of the same title. In the film version Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the camerlengo or administrator for the Holy See, was orphaned as a boy and was cared by the man who became Pope Pius XVI. The camerlengo takes temporary control of the Vatican while the papal conclave elect a new pope on the sudden death of Pope Pius XVI. Meanwhile, a plot has been hatched by McKenna to kill favoured cardinals because he believes the power of the church is waning and hatches a plot to have people turn about from science and back to the church. In the book version, the camerlengo is the biological son of Pope Pius XVI but grew up not knowing that. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Rocks in the Belly Jon Bauer 2012 You're eight years old. An only child. You love your parents, but you're convinced you're not enough for your mother because she fosters other people's kids. You've learnt to cope, just about, with how this makes you feel -- but then a boy called Robert arrives, and he and your Mum seem to connect in a way you never have. You hate him for it. And her. And one day you do something really bad to teach them both a lesson. At twenty-eight, you return home to face your mother, who is now chronically ill. Despite the intervening years, you haven't forgiven her - or yourself - for what happened. Ultimately, though, it's her forgiveness you crave, even after all this time - because you need to know, finally, that you were enough for her. External Website