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Blogs/Web Pages/Articles DrDee-ThinkingOutLoud Dee Michell 2008 This blog includes reference to Care Experienced People through book reviews, short form biographies, and critiques of the Australian child protection system. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Your Honour Can I Tell You My Story? Brierley et al 2019 Brierley Andi (Author), Hopkinson Jim (Foreword). The challenging story of a young person’s progress through care, prison and social rejection to youth justice specialist. It charts failures to connect with and modify the author’s chaotic early life moving from place to place, school to school, fragmented parenting and poor role models. Encircled by crime, drugs and baffling adults, Andi Brierley ended up first in a young offender institution then prison where he learned to think like a prisoner for his own survival, making everything harder for everybody on release. Until he determined to change and others saw his unenviable past could be put to good use. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Searching for my slave roots Malik Al Nasir 2020 By Malik Al Nasir, as told to Ed Thomas. The poet Malik Al Nasir has been on a journey to find his roots as a black Liverpudlian. It's a journey that has taken him back in time and halfway around the world, before returning him right back to the city where he began. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Sugarcane London: ‘This is all comfort food’ – restaurant review Tarell Mcintosh 2022 Tarell Mcintosh calls himself Chef Tee. This is the story of how he opened a restaurant during the pandemic and within a few weeks he had enough money to employ four care leavers. Chef Tee grew up in care and wanted to do something for other care leavers. External Website

Children's Fiction Don't Ask The Dragon Lemn Sissay (Author) Greg Stobbs (Illustrator) 2022 This is the story of Alem, a curious little boy who realises today is his birthday. The only problem is that Alem does not know where to celebrate, and who to celebrate with. He goes on an adventure all on his own, meeting exciting animals along the way. He befriends a bear, a fox, a treefrog, a bulldog and more. Every new friend he makes, he asks the same question: where shall I go? And every time he’s met with the same warning: ‘don’t ask the dragon . . . OR HE WILL EAT YOU’. The only thing Alem never speaks to is the tiny worm who sits on each page, perhaps it’s because the worm is so small! All alone at the top of a hill, Alem grows frustrated and helpless as he doesn’t know where to go. But someone – or something – does and Alem comes face-to-face with the dangerous dragon he was warned about. But just how dangerous is it? External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Are care leavers really more likely to go to prison than university? – ExChange Neil Harrison 2019 In this blog, academic Neil Harrison challenges what he calls the 'factoid' that care leavers are more likely to end up prison instead of at university. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Libraries Tasmania ​ ​ Libraries Tasmania has a page titled “Adoptions, fostering and out-of-home care”. Included is information on different sorts of records held by Tasmanian agencies and advice on how to access them. There’s also a list of “useful contacts and support services” including CLAN and the National Redress Scheme. Under “Key publications” are books which include The scent of my mother’s kiss by Merlene Fawdry and some focused on focused on the histories of Tasmanian children's homes. External Website

Children's Fiction Heidi Johanna Spyri 2015 Heidi is a work of fiction written in 1880 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri, originally published in two parts as Heidi's years of learning and travel (German: Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre) and Heidi makes use of what she has learned. It is a novel about the events in the life of a young girl in kinship care with her grandfather, in the Swiss Alps. It was written as a book "for children and those who love children."Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Unbelievable review – grimly credible story of trauma, power and injustice Hannah Daviies 2019 A review about the Netflix drama, Unbelievable about a retracted rape allegation. The author argues this is a fiercely feminist look at the nature of truth and whose stories get heard. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Lilian Bader: The First Black Woman to join the RAF Lillian Bader 2018 Lilian Bailey b.18 Feb 1918 d.13 Mar 2015 (aged 97) Liverpool, England. In 1927, Bader and her two brothers were orphaned when their father died. At the age of 9 she was separated from her brothers and placed in a convent, where she remained until she was 20 because no one would employ her because of racism. In 1939, at the onset of the Second World War, Bader enlisted in the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) at Catterick Camp, When it was discovered that her father was not born in the United Kingdom, she was dismissed. On 28 March 1941, she enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), after she heard that the Royal Air Force (RAF) were taking citizens of West Indian descent. She trained in instrument repair, which was a trade newly opened to women. She then became a Leading Aircraft Woman and was eventually promoted to the rank of corporal. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People How to Create the Perfect Wife: The True Story of One Gentleman, Two Orphans an Experiment to Create the Ideal Woman Wendy Moore 2014 This is the story of Thomas Day who, in 1769, decided to train a wife for himself. He chose 2 x 12 year olds from the Foundling Hospital in London and set about training them. Thomas Day's bizarre experiments didn't work; Lucretia was apprenticed to a milliner and 2 years later, Sabrina was sent to boarding school. External Website

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Blogs/Web Pages/Articles My name is Kenny and I love animals Kenny Murray 2018 Kenny Murray writes about being taken into care at the age of 11 and the importance to him of two dogs in a foster home who provided him with unconditional love. External Website

Behind the Scenes Antwone Fisher ​ ​ Antwone Quenton Fisher (born August 3, 1959) is an American director, screenwriter, author, and film producer. Fisher was born in prison to a single mother. His father Edward Elkins had been shot dead by a jealous girlfriend two months earlier. Antwone was placed in a foster home weeks after he was born and remained in foster care through most of his childhood. After living with a foster mother for two years, Fisher was taken away from her. He was then placed into another foster home with a family named the Picketts. He spent 14 years of his childhood with the Picketts and was abused physically, verbally, and sexually. He was then removed from the Pickett home after having a fight with his foster mother. Antwone was sent to George Junior Republic School, a discipline school for boys, from which he graduated before he joined the United States Navy. His 2001 autobiographical book Finding Fish was a New York Times Best Seller. The 2002 film Antwone Fisher was written by Fisher and directed by Denzel Washington. External Website

Behind the Scenes Carl Hancock Rux ​ ​ Carl Hancock Rux is an American poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, actor, director, singer-songwriter. He was born in New York and guardianship was assigned to his maternal grandmother. When she died, four year old Carl entered the foster care system until guardianship was again transferred to relatives. Carl Hancock Rux is the author of several books including the Village Voice Literary Prize-winning "Pagan Operetta," the novel, Asphalt, and the Obie Award-winning play, Talk. Rux is also a singer/songwriter with four CDs to his credit, as well as a frequent collaborator in the fields of dance, theater, film, and contemporary art. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Doris Duke Award for New Works. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Let Me Tell You. Mending a Broken Childhood Anthony McCabe 1998 With the 'Welfare Lady' providing the only support and consistency in his early life, Tony moves from school to school and from foster home to foster home, beset by behavioural problems no-one understands and that he cannot control. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People The Mystery of Charles Dickens A.N.Wilson 2020 In this pychological analysis of the great Victorian writer, A.N.Wilson explores how Charles Dickens drew on his own experiences as a child to create his popular novels. Wilson uses the idea of the 'false self' to suggest that Dickens protected his inner child from public scrutiny yet told the story of his childhood through his books. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley et al. 2001 From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct audience, the oppressed American blacks, he brought hope and self-respect. This autobiography (written with Alex Haley) reveals his journey through the US foster care system, Malcolm's quick-witted integrity, usually obscured by batteries of frenzied headlines, and the fierce idealism which led him to reject both liberal hypocrisies and black racialism. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Strange Myth of Romulus and Remus, The Founders of Rome History Defined ​ The story of a couple of rejected boys (albeit they are demi-gods) founding the city of Rome dates back centuries. But, say the authors of this History Defined blog, archaeological evidence shows that around 200 years before Romulus and Remus are said to have set up the city (on 21st April 753 BCE), there were inhabitants along the shores of the River Tiber. The myth was appealing because the Romans could argue they were entitled to dominance since their first king (Romulus after he killed Remus) was the “son of the god of war”. That plus the boys being raised by a wolf fitted the Romans' idea of “themselves as strong, warlike people.” The blog includes reference to European artwork depicting Romulus and Remus from the 15th century up to and including the 1654 painting of French artist Nicholas Mignar. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Women Who Raised Me Victoria Rowell 2007 The Women Who Raised Me is the remarkable story of Victoria Rowell's jouney out of the foster care system to attain the American Dream--and of the unlikely series of women who lifted, motivated, and inspired her along the way. From Agatha Armstead--a black Bostonian who was Victoria's longest-term foster mother and first noticed her spark of creativity and talent--to Esther Brooks, a Paris-trained prima ballerina who would become her first mentor at the Cambridge School of Ballet--The Women Who Raised Me is a loving, vivid portrait of all the women who would help Victoria transition out of foster care and into New York City's wild worlds of ballet, acting, and adulthood. External Website