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Television Shows The Rookie 2018 The Rookie (2018-2024) is an American police procedural. The story follows John Nolan (Nathan Fillion), a man in his forties, who becomes the oldest rookie police officer at the Los Angeles Police Department. The show is based on William Norcross, who moved to LA in 2015 and joined the LAPD in his mid-40s. Afton Williamson plays Talia Bishop who is appointed as Nolan’s training officer. Talia Bishop – who grew up in the foster care system - leaves the LAPD at the end of Season 1 after it is revealed she withheld information about her past, ie, that her foster brother has a criminal record. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lamb Bernard MacLaverty 1980 Bernard MacLaverty’s Lamb (1980) begins in Home for boys run by christian brothers. One of the youngest brothers, Michael Lamb, is horrified by the place and when he inherits a small amount of money, he leaves, taking with him 12-year-old Owen Kane. Michael and Owen pose as father and son until the money runs out. External Website

Radio & Podcast Peter Bell and the singular quest of Kyung Ae Peter Bell 2019 Peter's Korean birth mother spent years searching for her son in America. Then she discovered he was an Australian Football League (AFL) star living in Perth. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Book Review: That Reminds Me Barbara Grant 2020 Derek Owusu’s startling debut, That Reminds Me, shows us that love is fragile, and adults are not always the best caretakers. It is a powerful, sometimes haunting fictional memoir, about the failure of love, narrated through the eyes of a young vulnerable black boy called K. K is placed into the care system by his Ghanaian mother. He knows not why. His early childhood years are spent in foster care, in a rural community based outside of London. A place where the colour of his skin sets him apart. Split into five chronological sections, with a narrator who recites K’s life to Anansi, the renowned trickster in Caribbean and West African folklore, they contain fragments of stories, building up a complex picture of a troubled life. Life in care is not the refuge his mum may have hoped. His foster home and school memories are peppered with hidden abuse, neglect and spitefulness as K struggles with his identity in a cruel, loveless foster family. External Website

Writers Henry Morton Stanley 1841-1904 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 two 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. When he was about 15, John left the workhouse and, after being rejected by several relatives, was taken in by a cousin, Moses Owen, a schoolmaster in Brynford. 9 months later, John went to live with his Aunt Mary who introduced him to another aunt, whose partner worked in insurance in Liverpool. The clerkship John Rowlands had hoped for in Liverpool didn’t eventuate, and eventually he signed up as a cabin boy in a ship headed for America. John Rowlands landed in New Orleans in 1859 and became Henry Morton Stanley after he became friendly with a merchant, Henry Hope Stanley. Henry Morton Stanley was a soldier and seaman before he became a journalist. He was sent by the New York Herald in 1869 to find the Scottish explorer, David Livingstone, who hadn’t been heard from since he left for Africa in 1866. Stanley became a celebrity on his return to the States. After Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley decided to continue with exploring Africa. He was financed by the New York Herald and Daily Telegraph in London and left for Lake Victoria in 1874, reporting on his trip in The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (1885). External Website

Films/Videos A Little Princess (Film) 2020 A Little Princess is a 1995 American family drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Set during World War I, it focuses on a young girl who is relegated to a life of servitude in a New York City boarding school by the headmistress after receiving news that her father was killed in combat. Loosely based upon the 1905 novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this adaptation was heavily influenced by the 1939 cinematic version and takes creative liberties with the original story. External Website

Films/Videos Lamb (Film) 1985 Bernard MacLaverty’s wrote the screenplay for the 1985 adaptation of his novel Lamb. The film starred Liam Neeson as Michael Lamb and Hugh O’Conor as Owen Kane. The film begins in a Home for boys run by christian brothers. One of the youngest brothers, Brother Sebastian who real name is Michael Lamb, is horrified by the violence and forms an attachment to one of the boys there. When he inherits a small amount of money, Michael Lamb leaves, taking with him 10-year-old Owen Kane. Michael and Owen pose as father and son until the money—and time as Michael Lamb is being pursued for kidnapping Owen—runs out. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Foundlings Anna Spargo-Ryan 2022 Foundlings is a work-in-progress. Following the lives of two women who hoped for more, it’s historical fiction set in the Adelaide Destitute Asylum on the cusp of women’s suffrage legislation in the late nineteenth century. Anna also has a short story called Foundling in The Saturday Paper (16 July 2022) which is behind a paywall. External Website

Television Shows Three Girls 2017 Three Girls (2017) is the harrowing story of teenaage girls being exploited for sex in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. 9 men were finally convicted of sex trafficking, raping girls, and other offences in May 2012. But that was years after sexual health worker Sarah Rowbotham (Maxine Peake) first alerted authorities - police & social services - about what was happening. We've added the 3 part series to the archive because of the theme running through it that what will happen to girl victims of sex crimes is that they are likely to a. not be protected by the state and b. have their own children taken away by the state. External Website

Films/Videos The Forgotten Maggies 2009 The Forgotten Maggies (2009) is a documentary mad by Irish film maker Steven O’Riordan. The film explores, via interviews with women who had lived experience, the Magdalene Laundries of the 20th century. It focuses on the human rights problems of the State and the Roman Catholic church conspiring to keep these women incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries. External Website

Actors Victoria Rowell Victoria Lynn Rowell was born (May 10, 1959) in Portland, Maine. She is an American actress, writer, producer and dancer. Her biological mother, Dorothy Rowell, was of English descent and a Mayflower descendant, and her birth father, whose surname was Wilson, was of Jamaican descent. Rowell knew very little about her father. Her mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, took a taxi to a hospital to give birth to Rowell, leaving a son and two small daughters unsupervised. When Victoria was 16 days old, (along with her two sisters, Sheree and Lori), she was surrendered to child services. Rowell began her career as a ballet dancer and model, before making her acting debut in the 1987 comedy film, Leonard Part 6. In 1990, Rowell joined the cast of the CBS daytime soap opera, The Young and the Restless, as Drucilla Winters, her signature and longest role on television, for which she was nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards. She departed from the show in 2007. In 1990, Rowell founded the "Rowell Foster Children Positive Plan," which gives emotional support and financial aid to foster children, especially to those who aspire to become actors and dancers – the road Rowell took. In May 2006, Rowell was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the University of Southern Maine in recognition of her work for the benefit of foster children. External Website

Behind the Scenes Lennie James Lennie Michael James (born 11 October 1965) is a British actor, screenwriter, and playwright. James was born in Nottingham, the son of African-Trinidadian parents. He lived in South London and attended school at Ernest Bevin College. James' mother, Phyllis Mary James, died when he was 10, after which he and his brother, Kester, chose to live in a children's home instead of being sent to the United States to reside with a relative. James remained in foster care for eight years. He is best known for playing Tony Gates in Line of Duty, Morgan Jones in The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, and has appeared in many films including Snatch (2000) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Among James' more notable roles in television is Glen Boyle in the medical drama Critical on Sky 1. On American television, he portrayed the mysterious Robert Hawkins in the CBS series Jericho and Detective Joe Geddes in the AMC television series Low Winter Sun. External Website

Films/Videos Enola Holmes 2 2022 Enola Homles 2 (2022) is another film based on The Enola Holmes Mysteries by American writer Nancy Springer. In the 1st film, Enola Holmes ends up in the kinship care of Mycroft Holmes. In this one, she is a ward of Sherlock Holmes. Enola has started up her own private detective agency, and is about to close it when she is asked by an orphaned girl, Bessie, to find Bessie's sister, Sarah Chapman. Bessie has been living with the older Sarah, but they are not biological sisters. At the centre of the story is a match factory where girls and women are dying because of the phosphorus being used. A strike at the factory is a fictionalised version of an actual 1888 strike by women and girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow, London. External Website

Radio & Podcast When Robert met Maida Robert Tickner 2020 Former politician Robert Tickner grew up in country NSW, 'showered with love' by his adoptive parents. When he began the search for his biological mum Maida in his 40s, he discovered she was living close by. External Website

Non Fiction What is Life?: Understand Biology in Five Steps Paul Nurse 2020 Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born 25 January 1949), is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle. Nurse grew up thinking his maternal grandmother was his mother and his mother his sister. In this book Nurse asks what does it actually mean to be alive? he has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In this book, he takes up the challenge of defining life in a way that every reader can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step by step he illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology. He traces the roots of his own curiosity and knowledge to reveal how science works, both now and in the past. Using his personal experiences, in and out of the lab, he shares with us the challenges, the lucky breaks, and the thrilling eureka moments of discovery. To survive the challenges that face the human race today – from climate change, to pandemics, loss of biodiversity and food security – it is vital that we all understand what life is. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Fish Lloyd Jones 2022 The Fish (2022) by New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones is set in the conservative middle of the 20th century, 2 teenage girls are pregnant. One, Carla, is sent off to Sydney and doesn’t have the baby. The other is banished to a caravan and gives birth to what the grandparents and uncle call “The Fish” but who is christened Colin Montgomery. The Fish’s mother, as the unnamed narrator’s sister is called throughout the story, finds it increasingly difficult to care for her baby. She is sent to a mental health facility, then stays for a while with her parents, then she disappears. Care of Colin falls to the grandparents and uncle. On the one hand, they seem ashamed of the child. On the other, they care for him unstintingly. External Website

Films/Videos Rabbit-Proof Fence 2002 Australian film exploring the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The film is based on the on the 1996 book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence written by Doris Pilkington Garimara. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Norma Jean: My Secret Life With Marilyn Monroe Ted Jordan 1989 A personal account of the author's twenty-year relationship with the iconic Marilyn Monroe who was in foster care, children's homes and kinship care as a child. External Website

Films/Videos Take Care of Maya 2023 Take Care of Maya (2023) is a documentary (on Netflix) telling the story of what happened to Maya Kowalski when she was 10 and admitted to the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida. Hospital staff expressed concern about the treatment Maya was already receiving (under medical guidance) and alerted the child protection team. Dr Sally Smith, the medical director the child protection team, decided that Maya’s mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. May Kowalski was then removed from the care of her parents and held in state custody (while remaining in hospital). The Kowalskis have filed a lawsuit against Johns Hopkins, with a trail set to start in September 2023. External Website

Television Shows The Gardener 2025 The Gardener (2025) is a Spanish thriller series. A former actor, La China Jurado, and her son, Elmer, are badly injured after a car accident. Elmer is a young boy at the time and, because of the trauma to his head, can’t feel emotions. Because Elmer isn’t emotionally impacted by killing others, La China Jurado sets up a contact killing business using their gardening centre as a cover. Things become more complicated when Elmer develops a brain tumour, realizes he now can feel emotions, and falls in love with a young woman called Violeta (Catalina Sopelana) he’s been contract to kill. Violeta was orphaned as a child and has her own difficult past, including being suspected of murdering a demanding ex. External Website