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Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Reflection on a long career in Social Work Ruth Martin 2020 Preface by Richard Devine: This is a guest blog by Ruth Martin, a recently retired (mostly!) Social Worker from Bath and North East Somerset Council (BANES) who has written a reflection on changes in social work practice over a 42 year period. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Stanley: Africa's Greatest Explorer Tim Jeal et al. 2011 British explorer, journalist and politician, Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), was in kinship care, foster care and the workhouse as a child. Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands. He never knew his father, who died shortly after he was born. He was abandoned by his mother, 18-year-old unmarried Elizabeth Parry, almost immediately on his birth and handed over to the care of his grandfather, Moses Parry, who lived in Denbigh, Wales. John was about 6 when his 84-year-old grandfather died in 1847. The boy was taken to live with another couple, Jenny and Richard Price, and his care paid for by 2 uncles. When the Prices decided the rate was too low, and the uncles declined to pay more or care for the child themselves, John Rowlands was transferred to the St Asaph Union Workhouse. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Me, My Bike and a Street Dog Called Lucy Ishbel Holmes 2018 Ishbel Holmes, also known as World Bike Girl, a Scottish-Iranian woman became a champion racing cyclist in spite of having been abandoned by her family. At just 16, Holmes was put into foster care, at 17 she was homeless. A key worker told her she would always be in the gutter and that was when she decided things had to change. She started cycling. Holmes was determined to cycle the world but her journey took a completely unexpected turn when, despite her initial instincts not to, she rescued a street dog in Turkey. Ishbel was lost and alone when she started on her epic trip, but in Lucy found a companionship never previously known. Between the two there formed a deep bond and their relationship was followed and supported by thousands of readers online, before becoming a media sensation overnight when Ishbel put out a plea for help to transport Lucy to an animal shelter three hundred miles away. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Abraham Lincoln: A Life Michael Burlingame 2008 The first biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Michael Burlingame explores Lincoln's early childhood in Part 1 and in Part 2, examines Lincoln's life during his presidency. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Brightness of Stars: Stories of Adults Who Came Through the Care System Lisa Cherry 2022 In this poignant book, Lisa Cherry brings together a collection of candid and personal reflections on the care system in the UK, offering alternative ways of thinking about the care experience, supporting better ways of working, and providing justification for a trauma-informed lens to be applied to all forms of work with those in care. Through personal insights and reflections, the book brings often-unheard stories vividly to life, beginning with the author’s own. These are stories about love and pain; hurt and isolation; the depth of lived experience that makes up a life; how we live our lives through our relationships with others and where we feel we fit in. In this thoughtfully compiled third edition, original contributors such as Pav Akhtar, look back on their own reflections from the lives that they live now, new stories from activists Isabelle Kirkham; Rosie Canning, Sean Geoghegan, and others bring new perspectives, and discussion points provide the opportunity to consider the realities of the care experience as well as life beyond. Whilst each story is unique, shared themes reveal the truth of the care system and, coming at a time where there is a real opportunity for change, the narratives in this book are ultimately stories of hope and connection. This is crucial reading for policy makers, those working in social work, education and adoption, as well as care experienced adults. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Hidden Intersectionality: Care Experience, Disability Lys Eden; Jamie Crabb 2021 "Care Experienced as an identity is becoming increasingly embraced by a growing community. This community has lived experience of being looked after with support of state intervention in a range of settings such as foster, residential, kinship care and adoption. In this blog, 2 Care Experienced People, Lys Eden and Jamie Crabb, talk about their lived experience of the intersection of care experience, disability and neurodiversity." External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles National Aged and Community Care Roundtable for Forgotten Australians National Aged and Community Care Roundtable for Forgotten Australians ​ The National Aged & Community Care Roundtable for Forgotten Australians for launched their website in April 2023. Forgotten Australians, coined in 2004, refers to an estimated 500,000 Australians who were separated from their families between the 1940s until the late 1980s and who grew up in orphanages, children’s homes and foster care. The website was set up “as a resource hub for Forgotten Australians, Care Leavers and persons interested in learning about the experiences of individuals, who as children experienced institutional or out of home ‘care’, as they age, with an emphasis on appropriate and quality aged and community care.” External Website

Authors D Peter Llewelyn Davies ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles How Being Privately Fostered In White Families Impacted These People's Lives And Identities Ade Onibada 2019 A report on the American practice of fostering black children - privately - to white families. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles I was a child in care. We needed love, not chemicals | David Akinsanya David Akinsanya 2016 In this article, David writes about the disturbing news about drug trials on disruptive children "t my home kids were on another planet due to medication – and I could have been one of them" he says. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Nobody's Child by GJ Urquhart – Book Review. Leeds care home memoir. Sandra Callard 2020 This is a story of a difficult, violent, upbringing away from siblings in a Leeds care home. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Meaning of Maggie in Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif' Catherine Sustana et al. 2019 In Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif" the girls of the orphanage revile the character of Maggie, the one person more marginalized than they are. External Website

Authors U Nobody's Child: The True Story or Growing up in a Yorkshire Children's Home ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Doctor Who: The Timeless Children or Dr Who was a foundling ​ 2020 "The Timeless Children" is the tenth and final episode of the twelfth series of the British television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 1 March 2020. It was written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone. It is the second of a two-part story; the previous episode, "Ascension of the Cybermen", aired on 23 February. Doctor Who season 12 revealed the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all; rather, she is the Timeless Child, a billion-year-old being who became the base genetic code for the entire Time Lord race. A Shabogan (that’s an indigenous inhabitant of Gallifrey), specifically a female explorer called Tecteun, discovered a mysterious foundling on an alien planet. She soon realised the little girl had the ability to regenerate her body after suffering life-threatening injuries, so dedicated her life to experimenting on this immortal child to reproduce this regenerative effect in herself… which she eventually achieved.Then, over the aeons, Tecteun bestowed this regenerative ability on selected others, who become the ruling elite of Gallifrey and dubbed themselves ‘Time Lords’ after also conquering travel through Space and Time. But who was the curious foundling who begat all of Gallifreyan society? The Doctor. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Floella Benjamin (blog) Floella Benjamin 2021 Trinidadian-British television presenter, singer and politician, Baroness Floella Benjamin (b. 1949), was in foster care as a child. Floella Karen Yunies Benjamin was born in Pointe-a-Pierre, Trinidad. She was the second child of Veronica and Roy and remembers a happy secure childhood until her father decided to migrate to England. A year after Roy left, Veronica also left for England and Floella and siblings were left in foster care. When she was 10, and accompanied only by her siblings, Floella made the 15 day trip by sea from Trinidad to England. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Jane Austen at Home: A Biography Lucy Worsley 2018 In this biography, we find out that Jane Austen (1775-1817) was in foster care as a small child. Cassandra Austen apparently weaned her babies as soon as possible and then sent them to a foster mother (probably a Mrs Littleworth) who cared for them until they were walking and talking. The children’s parents visited the children daily, and sometimes the infants returned to the rectory for a visit too. But their home was in foster care. Lucy Worsley argues there were benefits to this arrangement in that all the children survived. However, the bonds between the children and their mother were weakened so much that her children barely noticed when Mrs Austen was absent from the rectory. Because Jane Austen also went to boarding school, Worsley estimates she spent nearly 5 of her first 11 years away from home. There are other Care Experienced family members too, as Jane Austen’s father was an orphan, her brother George lived in foster care all his childhood, and her brother Edward was adopted by the Knight family when he was 16. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Children’s rights Movement and the Charity sector. Sean Geoghegan 2021 In this blog, Sean Geoghan discusses the relationship between the Care Experienced community and the charity sector, including a history of the National Association of Young People in Care (NAYPIC). External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles I wasn't told why I was taken into care. For years I thought it was my fault Kerrie Portman 2020 Kerrie Portman explores how it is possible to adjust to a new situation, feel safe and settled, when you don’t know how you got there. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Comment: Is ‘lived experience’ a change-maker or ball and chain? Kenny Murray 2021 Kenneth Murray on the stigma associated with 'lived experience'. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Orphans in fiction British Library 2014 "Dickens's interest in orphans is almost obsessive," writes Professor John Mullan in this 2014 overview of orphans in 19th-century fiction. For example, the orphan can have adventures not available to the child being protected by parents and they're often cast in the role of a governess and therefore with "no certain class identity". For example, the orphan can have adventures not available to the child being protected by parents and they're often cast in the role of a governess and therefore with "no certain class identity". External Website