Search Results

Fiction featuring Care Experience One Christmas Night Hayley Webster 2019 One Christmas Night opens at 3.08 a.m., Christmas Eve in Newbury Street, Norwich with a thief about to break into one of the houses: The story is told from the point of view of nine characters in the present over Christmas Eve and leading up to midday Christmas Day: Sisters Joanie and Tash Blake, recently bereaved Wendy Finch, pub landlady Sue Winters, well-off Cynthia Ellis, pub employee Irma Wozniak, divorced Craig Mullany and Frank Blake who took up with Craig’s ex wife Jen. The investigating officer is DC Lucy Crane. Two of the characters are care experienced, one of whom is a main character. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Extinctions Josephine Wilson 2018 Winner of the prestigious Miles Franklin Award. Extinction is explored through themes of ageing, adoption, aboriginality and extinct species. Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life, he is determined to be miserable, but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen. When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbour, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime's secrets and lies, and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves. Humorous, poignant and galvanising, this is a novel about all kinds of extinction - natural, racial, national and personal - and what we can do to prevent them. External Website

Authors A Little Women ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Good and Bad Cards Frank Golding 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. External Website

Academic Articles Reconsidering the care-crime connection in a climate of crisis Claire Fitzpatrick 2020 This article charts new ground by exploring the important increase in awareness surrounding the care–crime connection in recent years. The over-representation of care experienced individuals in criminal justice settings has long been taken for granted. However, there has been a recent surge of interest in England and Wales in the need to avoid unnecessarily criminalising looked after children, and to support those with care experience in prison. Paradoxically, this increased awareness has occurred at the same time as a climate of crisis has threatened both the care system’s and the prison system’s capacity to function effectively. Despite the current climate, this article argues that things can be done to challenge the care–crime connection. Such strategies include: changing our language, connecting distinct policy priorities and moving beyond the limits of the law. Furthermore, the development of a life-course perspective could significantly improve understanding of the impact of care experience over time. This article concludes by arguing that in the current climate, continued diversionary push-back from the youth justice system is vital. Crucially, this could help further reduce the number of first time entrants in the justice system, and ultimately offer the best prospects for reducing the number of children who move between care and custody. 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

Authors T Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Child in Foster Care ➝ Back to Top

Authors E Eden's lost ➝ Fairyland ➝ Water under the bridge ➝ Careful, He Might Hear You (novel) ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Celestial Bodies Jokha Alharthi 2019 Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Celestial Bodies tell of Oman's evolution through the prism of one family's losses and loves. One of the characters, Salima, was in kinship care as a child. She lived with her uncle until she was 13, with her mother visiting occasionally. Salima returned to live with her mother at 13 but was promptly married off by her uncle. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice Laurel Corona 2008 The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice (2008) by American writer Laurel Corona tells the story of 2 sisters who were left as babies at the Ospedale della Pieta. Chiaretta marries into an aristocratic Venetian family and Maddalena becomes a violinist and Vivaldi’s muse. External Website

Authors L The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Gil Scott-Heron saved my life Malik Al Nasir 2011 After a traumatic childhood Abdul Malik Al Nasir seemed to be heading for jail or an early death. Then, at the age of 18, he met the famous poet and musician – with remarkable consequences. Article as told to Simon Hattenstone External Website

Radio & Podcast Mother of Lion, Sue Brierley, tells her story Sue Brierley 2020 Sue Brierley is the adoptive mother of Saroo, the Indian boy whose remarkable story of finding his Indian birth mother is told in the film “Lion”. Sue has now written her side of the story, and she talks to Paul Barclay about her book, "Lioness". External Website

Authors O On the Missed Crimean Connection between Leo Tolstoy and Florence Nightingale ➝ How the Mainstream Media Sees Us ➝ The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read? ➝ Filming The One Percent ➝ How Being Privately Fostered In White Families Impacted These People's Lives And Identities ➝ Back to Top

Authors C Hiraeth (a novel): Representations of Care-Experience in Literature ➝ How do care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging? ➝ Orphans and Class Anxiety in Nineteenth-century English Novels ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Lesson in Motherhood Paula McLain 2011 Here, a woman who was in kinship and foster care as a child writes about having to learn how to be the mother she always wanted for herself. External Website

Films/Videos Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story 2022 During the 2 part documentary (on Netflix) Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, Welsh journalist Meirion Jones, speaks of being concerned as a small child at the free access Jimmy Savile had to Duncroft Approved School in Surrey. He would visit his aunt there; she was the Head of the School which housed girls aged between 15 & 17 who were regarded as "emotionally disturbed". Surrey police in 2015 said there were 46 sexual assaults by Savile of 22 of those girls while Savile was visiting there. There are other allegations of Savile sexually abusing children in other children's homes too. External Website

Authors F Larissa FastHorse ➝ Antwone Fisher ➝ Back to Top

Authors A Inside Out: An Autobiography ➝ Letters to Gil ➝ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ➝ Would It Surprise You To Know…? ➝ All at Sea: Memories of a Coram Boy ➝ Wards of the state: An autobiographical novella ➝ Thrown Away Child ➝ Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union ➝ Dirty Laundry ➝ Deliver Me From Evil ➝ Ushant: an autobiographical narrative ➝ A Place to Call Home ➝ Labeled: Ward of the State ➝ Fifty-One Moves. ➝ Let Me Tell You. Mending a Broken Childhood ➝ Back to Top

Authors T The people making a difference: the woman who created a community for fellow adult adoptees ➝ The Vatican's Children ➝ Intelligent women are dangerous, no?’ Samantha Morton on sexism, success and survival ➝ The care leaver who made a number one album ➝ Back to Top