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Fiction featuring Care Experience Ordeal by Innocence (Novel) Agatha Christie 1958 Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence was first published in 1958. There are 5 adoptees in the novel, all now adults and adopted into the one family by Rachel Argyle. Rachel was killed 2 years before the story opens. Rachel Argyle had set up a refuge for children whose homes were bombed during WWII. She was so enthusiastic about her work she adopted 5 children, “those from particularly unsatisfactory homes or who were orphans” (53, 2017, HarperCollins). A central theme in Ordeal by Innocence is nature vs nurture, whether a privileged environment can overcome hereditary ‘weaknesses’. Christie’s psychological approach was, apparently, much criticised as was an element of racism in the story. Ordeal by Innocence was adapted for film in 1985 and for television in 2007 (ITV), 2009 (France) France, and 2018 (BBC One). External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Son of Sin Omar Sakr 2022 Son of Sin tells the story of Jamal who is coming to terms with being a queer Arab-Australian Muslim. He is growing up in an Australia where Islamophobio is rife and in a Muslim community that considers homosexuality as haram, a sin. Jamal lives with his mother and his brother, Moses, but for the first 7 years of his life he lived with an aunty, thinking the aunty was his mother. External Website

Films/Videos Brian Banks ​ 2018 Former American footballer, Brian Banks (b. 1985), was 16 when he was falsely accused of rape and taken into custody. He then spent 5 years in prison and 5 on probation before the conviction was overturned on 24 May 2012 and his record of being a sex offender expunged. Brian Banks' story is explored in this eponymous 2018 film, with Aldis Hodge starring as Aldis Hodge and Greg Kinnear as Justin Brooks, the California Innocence Project lawyer who was instructmental in the conviction being reversed. 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

Films/Videos America ​ 2020 America is a 2009 American made-for-television drama film. A biracial 17-year-old boy named America (Philip Johnson), who has experienced a difficult life of foster care and sexual abuse, undergoes counseling with psychiatrist Maureen Brennan (Rosie O'Donnell) to help him come to terms with his painful past of childhood trauma, including growing up with (and abandoned by) a crack-addicted mother (Toya Turner) and being shuffled through a series of foster homes. The film is based on the young adult novel America by E. R. Frank. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Foundling (2020) Stacey Halls 2020 The Foundling (2020) by Stacey Halls is the story of Bess Bright who gives up her 'illegitimate' baby daughter to the Foundling Hospital in 1748. When Bess goes to reclaim her daughter 6 years later, she is shocked to discovered the child has been claimed by someone else. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Kingdom Jo Nesbo 2020 The gripping new standalone thriller from multi-million copy bestseller, Jo Nesbo. When Roy and Carl's parents die suddenly, sixteen-year-old Roy is left as protector to his impulsive younger brother. But when Carl decides to travel the world in search of his fortune, Roy stays behind in their sleepy village, satisfied with his peaceful life as a mechanic.Some years later, Carl returns with his charismatic new wife, Shannon - an architect. T External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro 2013 Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances. Moving between inter-war London and Shanghai, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 The Turn of the Screw (1898) is a ghost story written by Henry James. The novella appeared in serial form in Colliers Weekly (an American magazine) between 27 January and 16 April 1898. A young woman becomes governess for 2 orphaned children who live on a remote estate. Her employment is organised by the children’s uncle. The governess becomes convinced that there are ghosts on the estate who intend to take the children. According to some commentators, The Turn of the Screw was influenced by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), including the themes of class and gender. In turn, we can see the influence of The Turn of the Screw in John Boyne’s This House is Haunted. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Bone People Keri Hulme 2001 Winner of the Booker Prize in 1985, Keri Hulme's The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Kerewin's cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Maori factory worker with a nasty temper. The narrative unravels to reveal the truths that lie behind these three characters, and in so doing displays itself as a huge, ambitious work that tackles the clash between Maori and European characters in beautiful prose of a heartrending poignancy. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dickens Boy Thomas Keneally 2020 Thomas Keneally’s book, The Dickens Boy, is a fictionalised account of Edward Dickens (1852-1902), Charles Dickens’ youngest child. At 16 Edward was sent off by his father to Australia, to “apply himself”. When Edward, or Plorn as he was nicknamed by his father, arrives in Australia he has help from George Rusden, then clerk of the Victorian Parliament—who had earlier helped out Alfred Dickens (1845-1912) on his arrival in Australia—to get a position as a stockman with the Bonney brothers at Momba Station, NSW. Edward then narrates his story of the first 2 years in Australia, riding long distances to see his brother, organising local cricket matches, mustering sheep, learning about Aboriginal culture. Kenneally presents Plorn as a delightful young man; he’s resourceful, principled, and kind. Being so far from his parents, Edward feels orphaned. But he's not and his older brother, Alfred, has been in Australia for a couple of years. There are, however, 2 orphan characters who become friends with Edward: Tom Larkin and Maurice McArden. Tom Larkin’s convict mother died in childbirth and his father, also a convict, died only a few years later. Maurice McArden’s parents are artists who often leave their son with an uncle, Eustace Fremmel, while they’re off on jaunts through Europe. When the artists die, 13 year old Maurice stays on with Eustace, but is sent off to NSW at the age of 15 to live with another uncle, Amos Fremmel. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words is the story of Esme Nicoll who lives with her single dad, Harry, in Oxford. Harry is a lexicographer working on the Oxford Dictionary (begun in 1879, not finished until 1928). Esme hangs out in the Scriptorium where Harry works; she collects and hides words she finds offensive and as she grows up, she collects words used by women that others find offensive. There is an important orphan character who features throughout The Dictionary of Lost Words. Lizzy Lester has been a domestic servant since she was 11 when her mother died and her many siblings disappeared. She's 8 years older than Esme and often looks after her for Harry. Eventually, the women become friends. There's a story of adoption too. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Nowhere Child Christian White 2018 The Nowhere Child (2018) is Australian writer Christian White's award winning debut novel. At the centre of the story is Melbourne woman and photographer, Kimberly Leamy, who at the opening of the story is told that she is Sammy Went, a child who was kidnapped 28 years earlier. Kimberly travels to the US to solve the mystery of why she ended up in Melbourne and along the way encounters snake wielding religious fantatics. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience My Last Confession Helen Fitzgerald 2009 An important character in this novel is 28 year old adoptee, Amanda, whose birth mother is murdered shortly after the 2 women meet for the first time. 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

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Promise Tony Birch 2014 In this collection of 12 stories, Tony Birch includes one which features a care experienced character, an Aboriginal Australian who was raised by his grandmother after his mother left.In The Promise, Luke is struggling with an alcohol addiction, his wife has left him and taken their children. Life looks more promising after a spiritual experience. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Franchise Affair (novel) Josephine Tey 2022 The Franchise Affair (1948) by Josephine Tey (Elizabeth MacKintosh 1896-1952) is 1 of 3 novels republished by Penguin in 2022 to mark the occasion of 70 years since Tey died. Set in the village of Milford, Surrey, two upper class women, Marion Sharpe and her mother, are accused and, eventually, charged with kidnapping, imprisoning in their attic for a month, starving and beating 15-year-old, Betty Kane. Local solicitor, Robert Blair, is asked to represent the Sharpe women and quite early decides they couldn’t possibly have committed the crime. Betty Kane is a war orphan, an adoptee. External Website

Films/Videos For Love ​ 2021 For Love, directed by Matt Smiley, is a documentary which tells stories from across Canada about the (often devastating) effects of the Canadian child welfare system on Indigenous communities and families. The film, narrated by Shania Twain, makes connections between Canada's current system of caring for children and the historic residential school system. External Website

Behind the Scenes Paul Abbott ​ ​ Paul Abbott (born 22 February 1960) is an English television screenwriter and producer. When he was nine his mother left home to pursue a relationship with another man. His father, left two years later. Abbott and his many siblings were in the care of their pregnant seventeen-year-old sister. Although a compulsive truant, Abbott cites his English teacher at Barden High School as an early positive influence. Age 11 he was raped by a stranger, leading to him jumping from the roof of a multi-story car park in an attempt to take his own life. Two years later after another suicide attempt he was sectioned into an adult mental hospital for a short while, later becoming a voluntary patient. On his release, he was taken into foster care. He attended a local Sixth Form College and started attending Burnley Writers' Circle. Abbott enrolled at the University of Manchester in 1980 to study psychology but decided to leave to concentrate on writing when a radio play was accepted by the BBC. Abbott has become one of the most critically and commercially successful television writers working in Britain today, following his work on many popular series, including Coronation Street, Cracker and Shameless, the last of which he created. He is also responsible for the creation of some of the most highly acclaimed television dramas of the 1990s and 2000s, including Reckless and Touching Evil for ITV and Clocking Off and State of Play for the BBC. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Suspect Michael Robotham (2018) 2004 Michael Robotham was inspired to write The Suspect because of a story Margaret Humphreys told him when he was working with her on Empty Cradles. She wondered if she was doing the ‘right thing’ by removing a newborn from his mother at birth. An 8-year-old boy, who adores his father, is no longer able to see him because an array of professionals decide—incorrectly—that the father has been sexually abusing his son. The father’s life is ruined, and he kills himself. When he becomes an adult, the boy is determined that those who caused this situation should pay for what happened. If he can’t get to the person directly, he’ll do so indirectly via loved ones. External Website