Search Results

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Tokyo Olympics: 'I just wanted a normal life' - Ireland's McFerran recalls childhood in foster care with BBC Sport NI's Nigel Ringland Ayeisha McFerran ​ Ayeisha McFerran has so often been a star performer for Ireland, with the 25-year-old goalkeeper making crucial saves to help the side reach the World Cup final in 2019 and a first Olympics Games. The Larne woman, who made her senior debut a day after turning 18, is set to add to her 105 appearances when Ireland face South Africa in their Tokyo opener on 24 July. It is a story of success but also one of childhood trauma, with McFerran placed in foster care after her mother passed away. For the first time she speaks publicly about her experiences in foster care - both positive and negative - in a bid to show other children in a similar position that they can fulfil their dreams just like anyone else. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Careless Kirsty Capes 2020 Sometimes it's easy to fall between the cracks... At 3.04pm on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out that she's pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions. But this isn't a love story... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Foundlings Anna Spargo-Ryan 2022 Foundlings is a work-in-progress. Following the lives of two women who hoped for more, it’s historical fiction set in the Adelaide Destitute Asylum on the cusp of women’s suffrage legislation in the late nineteenth century. Anna also has a short story called Foundling in The Saturday Paper (16 July 2022) which is behind a paywall. External Website

Children's Fiction The Wanderer Sharon Diaz Creech et al. 2011 Thirteen-year-old Sophie, who is adopted, sets sail for England from the US with her three uncles and two cousins. On the way, Sophie learns about how her parents died. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience As Swallows Fly LP McMahan 2021 When Malika, a young orphan in rural Pakistan, is savagely attacked, her face is left disfigured and her self-esteem destroyed. Haunted by the assault, she hides from the world, finding solace in her mathematical theories. A few years later, her intellectual brilliance is discovered and she leaves conflict-stricken Pakistan for a better education in Melbourne, where she finds herself placed with Kate—a successful plastic surgeon facing emotional insecurities of her own. Malika and Kate’s lives slowly intertwine as they find within each other what each has lacked alone. At first, Kate’s skills appear to offer a simple solution to Malika’s anguish, but when tragedy strikes, the price of beauty is found to be much higher than either of them could have known. As Swallows Fly is a poignant portrayal of survival, identity and empowerment in a culture dominated by the pursuit of perfection. In a captivating and unforgettable debut, McMahon asks what might be possible if we have the courage to be flawed. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The history of Tom Jones Henry Fielding 2011 The history of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding; edited with explanatory notes by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely ; with an introduction by Thomas Keymer. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel. External Website

Authors M Marilyn Monroe ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Determinism and Stigma... Jack Brookes 2019 In this blog, Jack Brookes writes about some of the concerns he has about some of the discussion regarding ACEs and childhood trauma. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Tattycoram Audrey Thomas 2010 Caricatured by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit as the cantankerous maid of Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, "Tattycoram" tells her own life story in this metafiction and taking readers into the distant fictional world of Charles Dickens's England, where, in an unusual twist, Dickens interacts with his own characters. Harriet Coram gains a poignant personal history. Abandoned as a baby at the London Foundling Hospital and cared for by a kindly foster mother until the age of five, the young Hattie attracts the attention of the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, who hires her as the family housemaid. In the Dickens household, Charles's sister Miss Georgina takes an instant dislike to Hattie's pretty looks and trains her caged raven to tease her with the mocking nickname of Tattycoram. Although Hattie escapes from Dickens and his family to care for her dying foster mother in the country, she is later swept back under the famous author's sphere of observation as a teacher in his newly founded school for released female convicts. There she befriends Elizabeth Avis, who also appears as another minor character from Little Dorrit. In typical Dickensian fashion, Hattie meets not one, but two, long-lost brothers and falls in love with the one who conveniently turns out not to be her "real" brother. But first, she must confront her benefactor about his shameless misrepresentation of her and Elizabeth's characters in his latest novel. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Hand Me Down World Lloyd Jones 2010 NZ writer Lloyd Jones' 2010 novel, Hand Me Down World, is the compelling story of a young African woman searching for the child stolen from her. When the story opens, the woman, Ines, is working in a hotel in Tunisian. She has a child by one of the hotel guests and that child is then taken from her (under the pretext she consented to the child being adopted). The woman migrates ‘illegally’ to Europe in search of her son. With help along the way, she journeys through Italy and Switzerland and eventually arrives in Berlin, where her son, Daniel, lives. More help is provided in Berlin by Bertrand, a beggar-poet; a blind man called Ralf (who worked as an academic before he became blind and was in an orphanage during WWII) for whom Ines works as a carer; and another man who lives with Ines and Ralf to help out with Ralf. Ines does get to spend time with her son, Daniel, but there is no happy ending, only the possibility of one in the future. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Who We Are Who Cares Scotland ​ A look at the representation of Care Experienced People in fictional and news media over time. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Political Suicide Michael Palmer 2014 When high-society doctor Gary McHugh believes he will be arrested for murder, he turns to old friend Dr Lou Welcome for help. Lou Welcome's best friend and AA sponsor is a care experienced character. Cap Duncan is a former professional boxer and now runs a gym, training Lou and Lou's 13 year old daughter, Emily. Cap doesn't feature heavily in the story but is there in pivotal moments. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles By Malik Al Nasir, as told to Ed Thomas Rashida Yosufzai 2021 While 10 orphans were able to be evacuated out of Afghanistan, dozens of others were left behind. Ten Afghan orphans who were smuggled through Afghanistan on buses and cars through the mountainous terrain of the war-torn country arrived in Australia on Friday. They were removed from orphanages run by Australian charity Mahboba’s Promise in remote regions of Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country. External Website

Children's Fiction The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1894 The tales in the book (as well as those in The Second Jungle Book, which followed in 1895 and includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. Mowgli was lost by his parents as a baby in the Indian jungle during a tiger attack, he is adopted by the Wolf Mother, Raksha and Father Wolf, who call him Mowgli (frog) because of his lack of fur and his refusal to sit still. Shere Khan the tiger demands that they give him the baby but the wolves refuse. Mowgli grows up with the pack, hunting with his brother wolves. In the pack, Mowgli learns he is able to stare down any wolf, and his unique ability to remove the painful thorns from the paws of his brothers is deeply appreciated as well. External Website

Children's Fiction Homecoming: Volume 1 Cynthia Voight 2012 “It’s still true.” That’s the first thing James Tillerman says to his older sister, Dicey, every morning. It’s still true that their mother has abandoned the four Tillermans in a mall parking lot somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. It’s still true that they have to find their own way to Great-aunt Cilla’s house in Bridgeport. It’s still true that they need to spend as little as possible on food and seek shelter anywhere that is out of view of the authorities. It’s still true that the only way they can hope to all stay together is to just keep moving forward. Deep down, Dicey hopes they can find someone to trust, someone who will take them in and love them. But she’s afraid it’s just too much to hope for.... External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Fragile Sarah Hilary 2021 Fragile (2021) by Sarah Hilary features characters from a children's home. Nell Ballard is now homeless, running from her past and carrying a secret she longs to set down. In Starling Villas, she becomes servant to an eccentric recluse. Robin Wilder lives by an exacting set of rules, expecting the same from Nell, who fears his retribution should she let standards slip. Just as she begins to find her balance in the house, Robin’s former wife sweeps in. Carolyn Wilder has no intention of allowing Nell to become comfortable in her new home. But who is underestimating whom? And who truly holds the power in Starling Villas? As events overtake the household, old wounds reopen and the past rushes in to exact its own terrible price. Fragile is a modern Gothic psychological thriller with a contemporary twist on the classic novel Rebecca External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Choose Me Kay Langdale 2013 Billy is only nine years old. But he's already learned that when your mum dies, you get your own social worker. He's also learned that once you are ten, the odds of finding a family to adopt you don't look so good. That's the part he wasn't supposed to overhear. Miriam Riley is up against a deadline to give Billy the 'forever family' that every child deserves. Determined to cut through red tape, she finds three very different couples who might fit the bill, though prospective parents come with issues of their own. Through Billy's watchful eyes, the summer unfolds. What does he really need? Will anyone choose him? External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Cane Warriors Alex Wheatle ​ Moa is fourteen. The only life he has ever known is toiling on the Frontier sugarcane plantation for endless hot days, fearing the vicious whips of the overseers. Then one night he learns of an uprising, led by the charismatic Tacky. Moa is to be a cane warrior, and fight for the freedom of all the enslaved people in the nearby plantations. But before they can escape, Moa and his friend Keverton, a CEP character, must face their first great task: to kill their overseer, Misser Donaldson. Based on the historical Tacky’s War in Jamaica, 1760. External Website

Comics, Comic books & Graphic Novels Valda Valda 1968 Abandoned as a baby, Valda was found and raised by a Gypsy woman named Dorcas. Valda was created in 1968 for the Girl's comic Mandy, she was designed to be a female equivalent to the popular character William Wilson. Her first appearance was in the 56th issue of the comic. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Every Good Deed and Other Stories Dorothy Whipple 2011 Every Good Deed was originally published in 1944 as a novella and is now included in a collection of short stories published in 2011 by Persephone Books. Two spinster sisters adopt a child from a local orphanage. Susan and Emily Topham are shy and caring. Their cook is a little more worldly-wise, but just barely. Gwen, the orphan steals, she talks back, she lies. She abuses the sisters and eventually runs away. A case of the sisters believing that if an orphan was cared about, she would in turn care but here nature trumps nurture which is disappointing as it feeds into the negative portrayal of care experience. To top it all, Gwen’s not even an orphan; her wily mother uses the situation to exact cash from the Topham sisters. One Good Turn starring Norman Wisdom, a very different story about a hapless handyman who finds his good intentions leading to disaster when he tries to raise money for an orphanage threatened with closure. The film was inspired by Whipple's novella. External Website