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Fiction featuring Care Experience The Puppet Show M.W. Craven 2018 The Puppet Show (2018) by MW Craven has a detective called Washington Poe, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe (who was in foster care as a child). Washington Poe is a disgraced detective, brought back to work at the National Crime Agency to locate a serial killer known as the Immolation Man. There are several Care Experienced Characters in the novel, including Tilly Bradshaw who works as an analyst for National Crime Agency. . External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lily: A Tale of Revenge Rose Tremain 2021 Lily tells the story of a foundling left in 1850 at the London Foundling Hospital. The baby is saved from wolves by a young police officer, Sam Trench. Named Lily Mortimer for a Foundling Hospital benefactor, the baby is then taken to a family at Rookery Farm in Suffolk where she is well cared for by her foster parents and foster siblings and the small child contributes as best she can to the work of the farm. Foster mother, Nellie Buck, is delighted to have a girl and teaches her needlework, a useful skill that the protagonist, 16-year-old and independent Lily, employs in her job as a wig maker at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium. When she is returned to the Foundling Hospital at the age of 6, Lily misses her foster family greatly and arranges with a young friend, Bridget—both girls are now 7 years of age—to run away. External Website

Non Fiction What Happened to You? Ophrah Winfrey 2021 With trauma expert, Dr Bruce Perry, Oprah Winfrey discusses the impact of trauma and insists that conversations must begin with asking: "what happened to you" instead of "what's wrong with you". Throughout the book, Oprah shares some of her traumatic experiences, including her time in kinship care as a small girl. External Website

Writers Nicky Campbell 1961- Nicky Campbell was born Nicolas Andrew Argyl Campbell in 1961. He was born in Edinburgh and adopted when he was four days old. Now a radio and television presenter and a journalist, Nicky Campbell began his career writing jingles. In 2004, Nicky Campbell wrote Blued Eye Son about his experience of being adopted. He has won numerous awards, including being appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2015. External Website

Films/Videos Memoirs of a Survivor 1981 Set in the future, D (Julie Christie) is struggling to survive in a failing city. She takes in a teenager, Emily and D watches as Emily falls for Gerald who operates a makeshift camp for the orphan and abandoned children of the city. Doubts about D's mental state occur as she travels back in time and looks in on Victorian family who lived at one time in her apartment. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Leaving care (out of print) Mike Stein et al 1986 Professor Mike Stein (Author), Kate Carey (Author). Each year about 14,000 young people aged between 16 and 19 leave the care of local authorities. Far from seeing themselves as on the threshold of adulthood, they are faced with a variety of problems - nowhere to live, little money and few friends or relatives to help them make the adjustment. Despite their predicament very little research has been done on the subject. This book concentrates on this neglected area. For two and a half years Kate Carey and Mike Stein maintained contact with a group of young people who left care in 1982, and, unlike previous studies, their research included those leaving foster care and "home on trial". The book makes extensive use of detailed first-hand accounts to examine how the young people made the transition from care. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for policy, law and practice and offer a strong challenge to the developing consensus view of "independence training" as the main basis of leaving care policy. The text is essential reading for those in contact with or concerned with young people in care. External Website

Academic Articles The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase one report Zoe Baker 2022 The report presents the key findings from phase one of the Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations project. It also presents a series of recommendations for policy and practice which intend to better support care-experienced graduates' transitions out of higher education and into employment and/or further study. External Website

Non Fiction Abby's Story Louise Allen 2020 Abby's Story is the latest book in the series Thrown Away Children by author and foster mum Louise Allen. Abby is suddenly removed from her adoptive family and taken into foster care. She has challenging behaviours that her foster mother finds difficult to imagine the origin of. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness Audrey Punnett 2014 The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness addresses loneliness and the feeling of being alone in the world, two distinct characteristics that mark the life of an orphan. Regardless if we have grown up with or without parents, we are all too likely to meet such experiences in ourselves and in our daily encounters with others. With numerous case examples, Dr. Punnett describes how loneliness and the feeling of being alone tend to be repeated in later relationships and may eventually lead to states of anxiety and depression. The main purpose of this book is not to just stay within the context of the literal orphan, but also to explore its symbolic dimensions in order to provide meaning to the diverse experiences of feeling alone in the world. In accepting the orphan within, we begin to take responsibility for our own unique life journey, a privileged journey in which one can at some point in time say with pride, I am an orphan. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Charlie Chaplin and the story of care Coram (Charlie Chaplin) 2021 The story of Charlie Chaplim and his experience of being sent to London workhouses from the age of seven. External Website

Writers Michael McCarthy Australian academic and maritime archaeologist, Michael McCarthy (b. 1947), was in kinship care, institutions and foster care as a child. When he was 2-weeks old, Michael McCarthy was taken in by Frances May, his aunt and half-sister to his mother, 15 year old Elizabeth. He became Michael Phillip May and was raised as her son and brother to Frances’ daughter. 5 years later Frances took Michael to a Father Hudson’s home because her husband was ill. When she went to collect the child, Frances was told he’d been sent out to Australia. Frances tried for 5 years to regain custody of Michael, to no avail, in part because she was not the child’s legal guardian. It wasn’t until 1993 that Frances met up with the then 46-year-old Michael. In Australia, Michael started out in St Vincent’s Foundling Home in Subiaco, Perth. From St Vincent’s he was transferred to Castledare Orphanage before he was fostered by Tom and Irene Gollop. Michael went on to become a sports teacher and from there he became a curator at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Cloud Cuckoo Land Anthony Doerr 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by American writer Anthony Doerr features an orphan character. The historical & speculative fiction novel centres around an Ancient Greek codex that links characters across the ages – 15th century Constantinople, present day Idaho, & a starship in the 22nd century. One of the five characters spanning these many centuries – all of whom find comfort in reading the Ancient Greek codex by Antonius Diogenese called Cloud Cuckoo Land – is Anna. Anna & her older sister Maria, both orphaned, live in Constantinople and does needlework for the church. Anna learns to read and with the help of a local boy, at night takes old books from an abandoned tower to sell to enthusiastic Italian collectors. When she flees Constantinople, she takes the codex with her and teaches it to her husband and their sons. External Website

Television Shows When Hope Calls This Canadian television series sets out to refute negative stereotypes of orphans. Set in 1916 in the small Canadian town of Brookfield, two sets - orphans themselves - run an orphanage for 6 children. Lillian and Grace were separated as girls; Lillian was adopted as a child but Grace was left in orphanages. When Hope Calls is a spin-ff from the Hallmark Channel's When Calls the Heart, which is based on a series by Janette Oke. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Peter Mullan’s Orphans find a new ‘home’ Kenny Smith 2019 The film, written and directed by Mullan, told the story of the four Flynn siblings – three brothers and a sister – who after the death of their mother are torn apart during a long dark night, on the eve of her funeral, of mishaps and understandings. Such was the cult of the movie that it even spawned its own catchphrase – ‘She ain’t heavy she’s ma mother.’ External Website

Television Shows Woman of the Dead 2022 Based on a mystery novel by Bernd Aichner, Totenfrau follows the mortician Brünhilde Blum (Anna-Maria Mühe), who is married to Mark (Maximilian Kraus), a cool, easygoing police officer. They live with their two kids in a small town outside Innsbruck, where the owners of the local ski resort are the true power. When Mark is killed in a hit-and-run one morning, his fellow cops are weirdly uninterested in pursuing the leads. Blum realizes that her husband was murdered because he was in the process of uncovering terrible secrets. Mark’s death opens up a fissure in Blum’s life. Elliptical flashbacks reveal that she was the adopted child of two morticians who moonlighted as sadists: their favored method of disciplining their daughter was to seal her in a coffin. The young Blum began to hear the corpses in her parents’ morgue speaking to her, offering her soothing counsel. In Episode 3, the priest says Blum's adopted parents wanted to return her hinting of something darker but he persuaded them not to... External Website

Films/Videos Two Heads Creek 2019 Two Heads Creek (2019) is an Australian and British horror film. While grieving their mother, Norman (Jordan Waller) and Anna (Kathryn Wilder) find out that Gabrielle had adopted them. They also discover that their birth mother, Mary (Kerry Armstrong), lives in a small, remote Australian town called Two Heads Creek. Arriving in Two Heads Creek, the siblings learn Mary owns all the local businesses. Although Mary had sent Norman and Anna away, she had kept up with their lives and was proud of them. External Website

Writers Louis Esson (poet, journalist) Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson was born in Edinburgh then moved with his mother to Melbourne, Australia when he was 3. For most of his childhood in Melbourne, Louis lived with his aunts and uncles, only visiting his mother during school holidays. From 1904, Esson began publishing poetry in the Bulletin and later contributed articles to the Socialist. Esson’s first full-length play, The Time is Not Yet Ripe, was staged in Melbourne in 1912. In the 1920s, Esson was a co-founder of the Pioneer Players, a theatre company dedicated to the performance of Australian plays. Although the Pioneer Players survived only 4 years, Louis Esson is widely regarded as the ‘father of Australian drama’. External Website

Children's Fiction Lucky Button Sir Michael Foreman Morpurgo et al. 2017 A moving historical story inspired by the Foundling Museum, written by acclaimed children's author Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Michael Foreman. From award-winning master storyteller Michael Morpurgo, author of the acclaimed War Horse, comes a moving historical story inspired by the Foundling Museum. A lonely boy struggles to cope with school bullies and caring for his mother, until a mysterious encounter reveals life in the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century and unravels a touching tale about the power of music. Beautifully illustrated by Kate Greenaway Medal-winning illustrator. External Website

Television Shows Sister Boniface Mysteries 2022 Sister Boniface Mysteries (2022) is a British detective series, a spin off from the Father Brown series. The series is set in the Cotswolds, England during the early 1960s. Sister Boniface is a Catholic nun with a PhD in forensic sciences who acts as an advisor to the local police. In the first episode, there are 4 orphans featured. 3 have grown up in the kinship care of their wealthy but abusive uncle, and 1 has grown up in an orphanage. One of the orphans is a murderer and another has been murdered. Episode 4 also has a Care Experienced Person – in the stereotypical role of a killer. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Thicker Than Water Kathryn Harrison 1991 Thicker Than Water (1991) by American writer, Kathryn Harrison, tells the story of Isabel who was abandoned by her parents and is raised in kinship care by her grandparents. Wrote Scott Spencer in the New York Times 21 April 1991: “Kathryn Harrison has taken the lament of the unloved child and turned it into a kind of psychosexual horror story, replete with incest and mutilation. Abandoned, living in a kind of emotional stupor, the narrator of "Thicker Than Water" was a burned-out case even as a child. She survived her parents' brief, unhappy marriage as if it had been a kind of bloody colonial war.” The story will be familiar to anyone who has read Harrison’s memoir, The Kiss (1997). Isabel ends up having an incestuous relationship with her father when he eventually returns. External Website