Search Results

Non Fiction Public Hostage Public Ranson: Ending Institutional America William Bronston 2021 Public Hostage Public Ransom tells the story of William Bronston's activist work within the infamous Willowbrook State School in New York. Bronston documents the activist work that led to media exposure in 1972 and the closure in 1987 of the facility, and sets out the reasons for why so many workers - 2000 - did not speak out about the appalling practices within the institution. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles ABC's Patricia Karvelas on her experience of Parliament's toxic 'sexist' culture and how a childhood tragedy shaped her. Natasha Johnson 2021 ABC's Patricia Karvelas on her experience of Parliament's toxic 'sexist' culture and how a childhood tragedy shaped her. When Karvelas was eight years old, her parents died suddenly and she was raised variously by her maternal grandmother and two sisters, Sue and Voula, who are 11 and eight years older. External Website

Performing Arts Singer, songwriter, American Keyshia Cole Keyshia Myeshia Cole (born Keyshia Myeshia Johnson,1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and television producer. She was born in Oakland, California and adopted at the age of two by family friends. Her career began when she met MC Hammer at the age of 12, and later met rapper Tupac Shakur. At the age of 15, she moved to Los Angeles and was later introduced to A&M Records. She released her debut album, The Way It Is (2005), which spawned five singles: "Never", "I Changed My Mind", "(I Just Want It) To Be Over", "I Should Have Cheated", and "Love". It was certified gold within 17 weeks, and then platinum just eight weeks later. The album stayed on the charts for over a year, selling over 1.6 million copies. After A&M folded, Cole released her second album Just Like You (2007) under Geffen Records, and the album debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200. It was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 50th Grammy Awards. Along with her music, Cole has ventured into reality television. She signed to a reality/documentary series Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is which aired on BET from 2006 until 2008, giving viewers a closer look into Cole's career and family life with her biological mother and sister. Her second reality show, Family First premiered on October 9, 2012. Her third reality show Keyshia Cole: All In premiered on February 24, 2015. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Sunken Road Garry Disher 1996 The Sunken Road is set in the mid-north of South Australia. It's the story of Anna and her family and friends - one of whom is Chester Flood. Chester's family is a large impoverished Catholic one, reason enough for the community to disparage them. The siblings are dispersed when their parents die; Chester ends up in the local convent which was previously a reformatory. As an adult, he does a stint in prison for the white-collar crime of fraud. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir Paula Mclain 2013 This memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of a compelling memoir. External Website

Radio & Podcast The agency accused of paying bribes for babies Background Briefing (4) 2024 In this episode of Australia’s ABC Background Briefing, we hear about Anna who was born in 1987 and who grew up believing she was an orphan. Anna lives in Melbourne, Australia. When she explored her adoption story she found out that her parents were married and she had been given up for adoption because she was a girl. As part of her investigation of what happened to Anna, reporter Gina McKeon spoke to a social worker whose job in the 80’s it was to assess referrals from the adoption agency in South Korean and allocate them to prospective parents in Melbourne. McKeon makes the point that by the 1980s in Australia, forced adoptions had ended and there were more opportunities for women to either have terminations or keep their children because of social changes. Therefore, she says, many prospective parents were looking overseas for children to adopt. External Website

Children's Fiction Hetty Feather (novel) Jacqueline Wilson 2010 London, 1876. Hetty Feather is just a tiny baby when her mother leaves her at the Foundling Hospital. The Hospital cares for abandoned children - but Hetty must first live with a foster family until she is big enough to go to school. Hetty's happiness is threatened when she must return to the Foundling Hospital to begin her education. The new life of awful uniforms and terrible food is a struggle for her, and she desperately misses her beloved Jem. But now she has the chance to find her real mother. Could she really be the wonderful Madame Adeline? Or will Hetty find the truth is even more surprising? Featuring a brand-new feisty Victorian heroine in this historical novel, Hetty Feather, is compelling, moving and funny. External Website

Children's Fiction The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 2020 Mark Twain's great American masterpiece, the tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim. External Website

Television Shows Cardinal 2018 In the 2nd sereies of this crime drama, villian Ray Northwind was in foster care and showing signs of violence from the age of 9. Two other characters were in kinship care, a low level drug dealer and his sister. In the 3rd season, a woman puts together a foster family of vulnerable young people and then uses them as her 'warriors'. One of the young people was 'in the system' and had already been in trouble for stalking a young woman. The murderous pyschiatrist in the show was orphaned by both parents commiting suicide when he was a child. External Website

Writers Billy Connolly (Writer) Billy Connolly (b. 1942), was born in Glasgow. When he was 3 and his sister, Florence, 4, their mother abandoned the children, living the children at home on their own. Neighbours heard the cries of the children and took them to an orphanage. At the time, the children's father, William Connolly, was serving with the Royal Air Force in Burma. Williams 2 unmarried sisters, Margaret and Mona, collected the children from the orphanage and took them in. After the war, William Connolly moved in with his sisters and his children. He sexually abused his son, and Mona physically beat Billy on a daily basis. Billy left school at 15, eventually supporting himself through folk singing before he moved to comedy at the age of 28. Billy Connolly has been entertaining international audiences with his stand-up comedy and acting performances for over forty years, including in films such as Mrs Brown (1997), Open Season (2006), and Brave (2012). He has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003) and honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow (2001), Nottingham Trent University (2010) and Strathclyde (2017). External Website

Films/Videos The Girl in the Spider's Web (film) 2018 The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) is an action thriller which is based on the eponymous novel by David Lagercrantz, who using characters - including Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy)- developed by Stieg Larsson. The film has a young Lisbeth leaving the family home to get away from her predatory father. As an adult, Salander is a vigilante hacker who becomes entangled with 'the Spiders', a criminal organisation formed by the sister Lisbeth left behind. External Website

Television Shows The Frankenstein Chronicles 2015 The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015) stars Sean Bean in the role of detective John Marlott. In the first series, Marlott uncovers a corpse made up of the parts of 8 missing children. In the second series, Marlott - brought back to life by Daniel Hervey (Ed Stoppard) - solves the mystery of who is poisoning the water and cutting the hearts out of murdered people. There are, of course, since the series is set in 1827, homeless children in the show. There are also adults who grew up in the Foundling Hospital, eg, Joseph Nightingale (Richie Campbell) and his friend, Queenie Pickett (Kerrie Hayes). External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Sweden urged to ban international adoption after damning inquiry findings The Guardian 2025 An inquiry running for almost 4 years in Sweden has prompted the head of the inquiry, Anna Singer, to accuse the Swedish state of “violations of human rights”. According to the inquiry, from the 1970s through to the 2002 more than 60,000 children have been adopted by Swedish families even though this often happened without consent or with “false documents.” In this article The Guardian article, Singer is reported as saying: “The state needs to acknowledge the violations of human rights that have occurred in the international adoption process and the consequences it has had for adoptees and their families, and ask for forgiveness,” she said. A key recommendation of Singer is that “Sweden should stop international adoption.” External Website

Academic theses What Effect does Life Story Work have on Life Writing? Deyanna Ricketts 2024 This PhD presents both critical and creative writing that analyses the interactions and intersections between Life Story Work, medical humanities, and life writing. I like to think of this work as plaiting together concepts from these three areas, tied up with a bobble of practice research. Life Story Work (LSW) is a “defined approach which provides the opportunity for children to explore their own history” (Rose, 2012: p26). This intervention aims to help children who are looked after by a local authority or adopted to ‘make sense of their pasts.’ External Website

Writers Anthony Burgess 1917-1993 John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (1917 – 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. John’s mother, Elizabeth Burgess, was a singer and dancer known on music hall posters as the Beautiful Belle Burgess. His father, Joseph Wilson, was a bookkeeper by day and a piano player by night. John’s mother and older sister, Muriel, died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. From then, John was in the care of his mother’s sister, Ann Bromley, until his father remarried in 1922. John Burgess Wilson graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester in 1940 with a degree in English Literature. For 6 years he served in the Army after which he taught in various colleges and was English master at Banbury Grammar School in 1950. While he was working as an education officer in Malaya and Borneo his first published novel, Time for a Tiger, appeared under the name of Anthony Burgess. He wrote 2 more novels with a Malayan setting before he was discharged from the British Colonial Services because of ill health. Back in England from 1959, Burgess became a prolific writer. By the time Clockwork Orange appeared, he had published another 6 novels. He also worked as a literary journalist and contributed to television and radio programs. Anthony Burgess was also a well-known composer of more than 200 pieces of music, including a libretti for the Glasgow production of Scottish Opera’s Oberon in 1985. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Feathers of the Snow Angel: Memories of a Child in Exile Lionel Pearce 2002 Lionel Pearce was orphaned at a young age and was brought to Australia under the Fairbridge scheme. He grew up in the Fairbridge Farm School in Western Australia and after working as a farm laborer and serving in the Army during the war, he returned to study, eventually becoming a medical practitioner. His mother's death, his rejection by her family and his institutionalism left him damaged and vulnerable. External Website

Children's Fiction Tales of the Weird, the Wild and the Wonderful Sophie Willan 2017 Tales of the Weird, the Wild and the Wonderful is the first of its kind: a dazzling collection of short stories, jam-packed with rambunctious characters on daring adventures written exclusively by Care Leavers for children. Discover why Franny Georgette Tinkleboom has been travelling around the world in a van that has giant mouse ears... And why Spike, the most mischievous hedgehog in Rivington Pike, keeps wandering off into the dark night... And what happens when you drink a wicked orange potion like Alicia Moonfall... Includes a foreword by Lemn Sissay External Website

Autobiography/Memoir This Boy. A Memoir of a Childhood Alan Johnson 2013 Alan Johnson's 2013 memoir, This Boy, was the 2014 Winner of the Orwell Prize and 2014 Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. As many have pointed out, Alan's mother Lily and his sister Linda are the heroes of the story. Lily works multiple jobs to keep her family together, even though her health requires her to be in and out of hospital. Linda ensures that, at the age of 16, the state entrusts 13 year old Alan's care to her after Lily dies. Alan Johnson - after a variety of jobs - became the MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle from 1997 to 2017. External Website

Television Shows Switched at Birth 2011 Switched at Birth is a TV series starring Katie Leclerc, Vanessa Marano, and Constance Marie. Two teenage girls' lives are turned upside down when they find out they were switched at birth. An additional CEP character is Ty or Tyler Mendosa, who grew up in kinship care with his mother. External Website

Television Shows The Last of Us 2023 The Last of Us (2023) is an American post-apocalyptic drama series based on the eponymous video game franchise. Set decades after the collapse of society, the 1st season follows Joel (Pedro) as he smuggles a 14 year old teenager, Ellie (Bella Ramsay), across the United States. Ellie is immune to the fungal infection which has devasted society. Therefore, she might be the key to creating a much needed vaccine. External Website