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Writers Ronald Wilson Ronald Wilson (1922-2005) was born in Geraldton, Western Australia. His mother died when Ronald was 4 and he and his brother were mostly cared for by a housekeeper. Then when Ronald was 7, his father suffered a debilating stroke and spent the remaining 5 years of his life in hospice care. Ronald's older brother, then 14, began caring for the boy, along with the housekeeper. He enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1941 and then served in RAAF until 1946. Wilson graduated with a Bachelor of Law from the University of Western Australian in 1949, then studied for a Master in Law from the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson had a ten-year term as the Western Australian Solicitor-General and in 1979 became the first Western Australian to be appointed to the High Court of Australia. Amongst other publications, Sir Ronald Wilson is co-author (with Mick Dodson) of the hugely significant Bringing Them Home Report (1997), a report of the findings from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. External Website

Radio & Podcast Loco Parentis Podcast Twayna Mayne Loco Parentis Podcast is a fostering and adoption podcast featuring former cared for children and adoptees hosted by Twayna Mayne. External Website

Non Fiction Superheroes, Orphans and Origins: 125 Years in Comics Foundling Museum 2022 Many of the most inspiring characters in comics and graphic novels began their epic journeys as orphaned or abandoned children. In these stories, the loss of a parent inflicts challenges that even superpowers cannot easily resolve. For over a century and millions of readers, the comic strip is a space in which this narrative has been continuously reimagined. Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 Years in Comics offers a richly illustrated and thought-provoking exploration of the representation of orphans, foundlings, adoptees and foster children in sequential art. Surveying 125 years of creative practice and an international cast of characters, this book examines how care-experience is depicted in early comic strips like Little Orphan Annie, celebrated superhero narratives including Superman and Batman, and popular Japanese manga, among other examples. The complex issues and identities that feature in these stories are considered from a variety of perspectives, ranging from art historical to activist. Contributing authors include Lemn Sissay, MBE and award-winning artists Carlos Giménez and Lisa Wool- Rim Sjöblom, all drawing inspiration from their own experiences in care. Bringing together critical essays, candid conversations and outstanding artwork, this book encourages a new way to experience comics. This book is published on the occasion of the first major exhibition to focus on the representation of care experience in comics, produced by the Foundling Museum in London (April – August 2022). External Website

Television Shows Long Lost Family 2011 Long Lost Family is a British television series that works to reunite long separated relatiives. The program includes reuniting fathers to children and adopted children to birth family. The socio-historical contexts for the separations are also included. The Irish Magdalene Laundries (Series 6) and the shipment of children to Australia (2022 Special) are included in the series which is presented by Davina Mcall and adoptee Nicky Campbell. External Website

Academic Articles Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America Daniel Cohen 2012 Sometime after July 1851, Mary Field Williams Gibson, a teenage orphan from Vermont, moved to Boston to make her fortune. By the following summer, the 17 year old had begun publishing powers and short stories. Writing under the pseudonym, Winnie Woodfer, Gibson soon became a major contributor to several of Boston's most popular papers. In this paper, Daniel Cohen discusses the life and work of Winnie Woodfern. External Website

Authors C Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story ➝ Steering the Mothership: The Complexities of Mothering ➝ We Are Not The Same - Africa and The Caribbean ➝ Foster Focus Magazine ➝ Conversations that Make a Difference for Children and Young People: Relationship-Focused Practice from the Frontline ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir The Last Foundling: A little boy left behind, The mother who wanted him back Tom H. Mackenzie 2014 When she fell pregnant in London in 1938, Jean knew that she couldn't keep her baby. The unmarried daughter of an elder in the Church of Scotland, she would shame her family if she returned to the north in such a condition. Scared and alone in a city on the brink of war, she begged the Foundling Hospital to give her baby the start in life that she could not. The institution, which had been providing care for deserted infants since the eighteenth century, allowed Jean to nurse her son for nine weeks, leaving her heartbroken when the time came to let him go. External Website

Authors P David Plowman ➝ Edgar Allan Poe (writer) ➝ Martyn Percy ➝ Georges Perec ➝ Stacey Patton ➝ Philip Pullman (writer) ➝ Lesley Pearse ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Ways of the Wicked Witch Deidre Michell 2012 Deidre Michell is a Forgotten Australian, one of six siblings taken into State Care during the 1960s, In this book Deidre describes the healing process which enabled her to move through the grief of losing her family and into a new, more fulfilling stage of her life. External Website

Radio & Podcast James VI and I: Life of the Week History Extra Podcast 2024 In this History Extra podcast, historian Joe Ellis discusses the life of King James VI of Scotland (1566-1625) who also became King James I of England (from 1603 until 1625) Joe Ellis describes James VI as a “cradle king” because he was “effectively orphaned” after his father, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was killed in 1567 and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned the same year. Although Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle in 1568, she never saw her son again. James VI/I is remembered for Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up parliament and assassinate him; for his obsession with witches; and for commissioning what’s known as the King James bible. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Only: A singular memoir Caroline Baum 2017 Only, is a memoir of an unconventional childhood that explores what it means to be an Only Child -- as both child and adult. Also what it means to be the daughter of two people who were in foster care as children. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Dog Boy Eva Hornung 2009 Dog Boy (2009) by Australian writer, Eva Hornung (pseudonym for Eva Sallis) was inspired by Ivan Mishukov, a Russian child who was born in 1992 and lived with dogs for about 2 years. In Dog Bog, It is Romochka who has lived with doges for 2 years and appears to be 6 years of age when he is found on the streets of Moscow in 1998. Beside Romochka, the majority of characters in Dog Boys are dogs as the pack of dogs become Romochka’s new family. Romochka learns how to behave like a dog and becomes adept at passing as either dog or boy. Dog Boy won the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs 1861 Harriet Jacobs (b.1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic" Enslaved from her birth in 1813 in North Carolina, Harriet Jacobs was taught to read and write by her enslaver. But when her enslaver died, young Jacobs was left to a relative who treated her far worse. When she was a teenager, her enslaver made sexual advances toward her. Finally, one night in 1835, she sought freedom. She did not get far and wound up hiding in a small attic space above the house of her grandmother, who had been set free by her enslaver some years earlier. Incredibly, Jacobs spent seven years in hiding, and health problems caused by her constant confinement led her family to find a sea captain who would smuggle her north. Jacobs found a job as a domestic servant in New York, but life as a free person was not without dangers. There was a fear that those seeking to capture freedom seekers, empowered by the Fugitive Slave Law, might track her down. She eventually moved to Massachusetts. In 1862, under the pen name Linda Brent, she published her memoir "Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself." External Website

Writers Bryce Courtenay 1933-2012 Arthur Bryce Courtenay, (14 August 1933 – 22 November 2012) was a South African-Australian advertising director and novelist. He is one of Australia's best-selling authors, notable for his book The Power of One. Bryce Courtenay was born in a small village in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa. He was the ‘illegitimate’ child of Maude Greer, a dressmaker, and a salesman who was already married, Arthur Ryder. He later said he was sent at the age of five to a boarding school which was more like a combination orphanage/reform school. According to Courtenay, story telling was a survival strategy he used there, Bryce Courtenay moved to Australia—after a sojourn in London—with his Australian-born wife, Benita, in 1958 and was a highly successful advertising executive before becoming a highly successful novelist. 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

Fiction featuring Care Experience Caging Skies Christine Leunens 2019 This extraordinary novel is seen through the eyes of Johannes, an avid member of the Hitler Youth in the 1940s. After he is severely injured in a raid, he discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl called Elsa behind a false wall in their large house in Vienna. His initial horror turns to interest, then love and obsession. After the disappearance of his parents, Johannes finds he is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house, the only one responsible for her survival. Both manipulating and manipulated, Johannes dreads the end of the war: with it will come the prospect of losing Elsa and their relationship, which ranges through passion and obsession, dependence and indifference, love and hate.This gripping, masterful work examines truth and lies at both political and personal levels, laying bare the darkest corners of the human soul. External Website

Films/Videos ANNA 2019 In ANNA (2019), Anna Poliatova is orphaned after a car crash, and is in an abusive relationship, addicted to drugs. Recruited by the KGB and later manipulated by the CIA, she is used as an expendable asset under the illusion of rescue and purpose. External Website

Poets Vicki Roach Vicki Roach Aboriginal Australian activist and writer, Vicki Roach (b. 1958), was in an institution and in foster care as a child.Vicki Roach is a Yiun woman and a member of the Stolen Generations. She was taken from her mother—also a member of the Stolen Generations who had been in the notorious Parramatta Girls Home—when she was two years of age. Vicki’s mother had requested the state care for her child while she went into an unmarried mother’s home and had another child. What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement ended up with Vicki being made a ward of the (NSW) state and placed into a white foster home in the western Sydney suburb of Carramar. Education has been a significant force in Vicki Roach’s life. She left school at 13, but took on a Bachelor degree with the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University during one stint in prison. From there she went on to do a Masters through Swinburne University, and in 2009 was onto a PhD. Vicki Roach has been publishing poetry and essays since 2000. External Website

Authors T The Unfinished Prince ➝ Jennifer Down and Jonathan Franzen relive the 1970s ➝ Episode 74 - The Care Experienced Conference ➝ The Book Club: Patricia Highsmith ➝ Episode 237. Marilyn Monroe ➝ The Sunday Read: 'The Blind Side' Made Him Famous. But He Has a Different Story to Tell ➝ The forgotten children of the Empire ➝ The UpEND Podcast ➝ Tolstoy: War and the Russian Empire ➝ The Kids of Rutherford County ➝ JRR Tolkien ➝ May Wirth: bareback riding queen ➝ The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp ➝ Trans-national adoption and "blending in" ➝ The Magdalenes and I ➝ Charlie Chaplin's Funny Walk and Other Music Hall Mysteries ➝ Today in Focus: Bangladesh ➝ The Children's Homes Scandal ➝ The 31: Ukraine's stolen children ➝ The Tangled Branches of Lech Blaine’s Family Tree ➝ An ode to the telephone ➝ Living in class limbo ➝ Life after Adoption from Foster Care ➝ Adoption and moral obligation ➝ The Strange Life of Ingrid Von Oelhafen ➝ The Lady Imposter ➝ The Missing Magdalens ➝ John Boyne on The Book Shelf with Ryan Tubridy ➝ Kiri Te Kanawa (Podcast) ➝ The 'Troubled Teen' Industry ➝ When Robert met Maida ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience In the Woods Tana French 2007 In the Woods (2007) follows the investigation by two Irish detectives of the murder of a 12-year-old child. One detective, Rob Ryan—who is narrating In the Woods—was sent away to boarding school as a child after being involved in a distressing childhood incident. The other detective, Cassie Maddox, was in kinship care as a child. This story, along with The Likeness, was adapted for the 2019 television series, Dublin Murders. External Website