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

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Runaway Orphans Pam Weaver 2022 The Runaway Orphans (2022) by Pam Weaver tells the story of Amy and Lillian. Sisters, they are desperate to escape their stepfather’s house, so they board a train full of children being evacuated from London during WWII. When they arrive in the seaside town of Worthing, they are taken in by a kindly couple, Norah & Jim. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Floella Benjamin (blog) Floella Benjamin 2021 Trinidadian-British television presenter, singer and politician, Baroness Floella Benjamin (b. 1949), was in foster care as a child. Floella Karen Yunies Benjamin was born in Pointe-a-Pierre, Trinidad. She was the second child of Veronica and Roy and remembers a happy secure childhood until her father decided to migrate to England. A year after Roy left, Veronica also left for England and Floella and siblings were left in foster care. When she was 10, and accompanied only by her siblings, Floella made the 15 day trip by sea from Trinidad to England. External Website

Television Shows Goliath 2016 Legal drama series. Main character is lawyer Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton). His new 2IC is Patty Solis-Papagian (Nina Arianda), who was in foster care. She is a lawyer and a real estate agent. There are other Care Experienced characters in the series, all playing the roles of villians. In the 4th season of legal drama, Patty Solis-Pagian is now a swanky corporate lawyer. There's a kinship care character too. Kate Zax (Clara Wong) is the niece of George Zax and was in his care from a young age. She's a chemist at Zax Pharma and concerned about the addictive properties of the drug the corporation promotes as non-addictive. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles The care leaver who made a number one album BBC News 2022 British Care Leaver, Matt Taylor, has won a Rising Star award at the 2022 Music Producers guild Awards. Matt was in children's homes for 3 years from the age of 13. "People from care are sort of taught not to have dreams," he said. He now hopes his success will inspire others from similar backgrounds. External Website

Actors Charlie Murphy Charles Quinton Murphy (July 12, 1959 – April 12, 2017) was an American actor, comedian, and writer. He was best known as a writer and cast member of the Comedy Central sketch-comedy series Chappelle's Show and as the co-star of the sitcom Black Jesus. He was the older brother of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy. Born and raised in New York, Eddie and Charlie's parents - Lillian and Charles - split up when the boys were little. Charles was murdered by a girlfriend just a few years later. Lillian became ill and the brothers spent a short period in foster care. She then remarried and her husband Vernon Lynch brought Eddie and Charlie up.He talked about experimenting with drugs and having "tons of fights". He once found himself with a gun held to his head in high school after threatening a classmate. According to his 2009 book The Making of a Stand-Up Guy, Murphy received three years probation for robbing a driver at gunpoint, and in the final year of his probation was arrested for larceny, loitering and other misdemeanours. He was then sentenced to serve the rest of his probation - 10 months - in county jail. His mother took him to all the armed services recruitment offices on the day he was released from jail in 1978 and they all turned him down due to his criminal record. The Navy eventually agreed to take him after his mother pleaded: "You gotta take my son or he's going to be killed out here." He served for six years as a boiler technician. He died in 2017 of Leukemia. External Website

Radio & Podcast Karen Menzies' hidden Aboriginal heritage Karen Menzies 2016 The truth of Karen Menzies' Aboriginal heritage was a shock that took her more than a decade to fully comprehend. She was removed from her foster parents and spent her teenage years in instituions, later playing soccer for Australia. External Website

Authors E Australian singer ➝ Aboriginal Australian, Singer, songrwriter ➝ Back to Top

Academic Articles Surviving the "House of a Hundred Windows": Irish Industrial Schools in Recent Fiction and Memoirs Michael Molino 2001 The story of industrial schools in Ireland is, then, a history of intersecting tendencies. On the one hand, initially well-intended educational and religious beliefs and practices gave way to a self-protecting system where abuse was tolerated and abusers protected. On the other hand, the stories of child abuse, often told by adults later in life, reflect a different trajectory—from a topic discussed, if at all, only in euphemistic and muted terms to an incendiary issue where guilt is often immediately assumed. This paradoxical history, with all its ambivalent attitudes, has been pointedly revealed in recent fiction and memoirs, where the stories of children sent to industrial schools are given voice and the horrors of institutional life exposed. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Jenni Fagan’s ‘visceral’ memoir of growing up in care wins Gordon Burn prize The Guardian 2025 Jenni Fagan’s memoir Ootlin, which recounts her experience growing up in care, has won the £10,000 Gordon Burn Prize. Announced at a ceremony in Newcastle, Fagan called the award a “huge honor” and hopes it will help the book reach a wider audience, influencing policymakers to better protect children in the care system. External Website

Actors James Dean James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American actor. James' mother died when he was nine and his father sent him to live with relatives. James dropped out of university to pursue acting. In 1953 he performed the role of Cal Trask in East of Eden, for which he was posthumously nominated for Best Actor in the 1956 Academy Awards. He is remembered as a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment and social estrangement, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled teenager Jim Stark. After his death in a car crash, Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the 18th best male movie star of Golden Age Hollywood in AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list. External Website

Authors W The Lost Orphan ➝ Kemosha of the Caribbean ➝ Cane Warriors ➝ The Runaway Orphans ➝ The Seven Sisters ➝ Oranges are not the only fruit ➝ Brenton Brown ➝ Brixton Rock ➝ Man Who Lived Underground ➝ Back to Top

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp A Fortunate Life (Theatre adaptation) A.B. Facey 2019 In 2020, a striking collaboration between artists of stage and screen honours the trials and triumphs of extraordinary everyman A.B Facey, whose award-winning Australian classic autobiography, A Fortunate Life, has been adapted for theatrical presentation. Albert Barnett Facey born in Maidstone, Victoria, Australia, in 1894, the youngest of seven children. His father died when he was two of typhoid fever. When Bert was four, his Grandpa died. Bert's mother then left the rest of her children to be looked after by their grandmother to go to the Goldfields, but met and married another man and had nothing further to do with Bert's upbringing. Facey had been making notes on his life since an early age, at the urging of his wife, he eventually wrote them up into a full manuscript, by hand, in a series of exercise books, working at the kitchen table. He then had the manuscript typed up and sent it to Fremantle Arts Centre Press, requesting that twenty copies be printed and bound for family members and friends. Facey's story was so remarkable, however, that it was immediately accepted for commercial publication. It appeared just nine months before his death on 11 February 1982, in his 88th year. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Ten Doors Down: The story of an extraordinary adoption reunion Robert Tickner 2020 Robert Tickner had always known he was adopted, but had rarely felt much curiosity about his origins. Born in 1951, he had a happy childhood - raised by his loving adoptive parents, Bert and Gwen Tickner, in the small seaside town of Forster, New South Wales. He grew up to be a cheerful and confident young man with a fierce sense of social justice, and the desire and stamina to make political change. Serving in the Hawke and Keating governments, he held the portfolio of minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. During his time on the front bench, Robert's son was born, and it was his deep sense of connection to this child that moved him at last to turn his attention to the question of his own birth. Although he had some sense of the potentially life-changing course that lay ahead of him, he could not have anticipated learning of the exceptional nature of the woman who had brought him into the world, the deep scars that his forced adoption had left on her, and the astonishing series of coincidences that had already linked their lives. And this was only the first half of a story. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat Oliver Sacks 1985 Oliver Sacks' well known book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), contains 3 case histories of Care Experienced People. 2. Rebecca was raised by her grandmother and although many see her as deficient, theatre offers an important way for Rebecca to understand and express herself. When she's performing on stage, no one sees Rebecca as lacking. 2. Rebecca was raised by her grandmother and although many see her as deficient, theatre offers an important way for Rebecca to understand and express herself. When she's performing on stage, noone sees Rebecca as lacking. 3. Twins John and Michael have been in institutions since age 7. By the time they're 26 they're already famous because of their numerical prowess. However, when they're separated and living a semi-'normal' life, they lose their gift. External Website

Films/Videos The BFG (film) 2016 The BFG is a movie starring Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, and Penelope Wilton. An orphan little girl befriends a benevolent giant who takes her to Giant Country, where they attempt to stop the man-eating giants that are invading the... External Website

Actors Noel Tovey Aboriginal Australian actor, dancer, singer, director, choreographer and writer, Noel Tovey (b. 1934), was in a children’s home and foster care as a child. Noel was the 3rd of 5 children born into an impoverished family living in the inner-city suburb of Carlton, Melbourne. His mother, Winifred Ann Tovey, was Aboriginal and his father, Frederick Morton, was of African-Canadian-French-Creole heritage. When Noel was 6, their parents abandoned their children and the Welfare Authorities put them into the Royal Park Depot, and from there Noel was taken in by Arthur Challenger and his mother, who lived in Burren Junction, more than 600km north-west of Sydney. n 1954 Noel danced in Paint Your Wagon, which toured in Adelaide and Sydney. Later, Noel Tovey trained at the national Theatre Ballet School. Then in 1961, he was in London working as the principal dancer for the Sadler’s Wells Company. He also made his debut as a singer and choreographer in London, directing and choreographing numerous productions across Europe. While in London, Noel and his partner set up what became one of the top galleries in London, L’Odeon. Noel didn’t return to Australian until 1990. He set up a performing arts course and continued his work as a director. Little Black Bastard, Noel Tovel’s autobiography, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. The one man play based on the book was also well received in Australia, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2010 and the London Origins Festival in 2011. Noel Tovey has served on the NSW Arts Council, the 2000 Olympic Arts Festival and the AIDS Trust of Australia, amongst others. He set up the Novel Tovey Scholarship Fund to assist those from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a leading youth arts company. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, A Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home Steve Pemberton 2012 Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lying Beside You Michael Robotham (2022) 2022 Michael Robotham 4 Lying Beside You (2022) is the 3rd in the Michael Robotham Cyrus Haven series. Cyrus Haven is a forensic psychologist who was in kinship care with his grandparents after his older brother murdered his parents and twin sisters. In Good Girl, Bad Girl (2019) he is introduced to Evie Cormac who has been in foster care and is now living in a youth detention centre. The sequel, When She Was Good (2020), included a Care Experienced characters who runs a paedophile ring and another is an enabler who transports children from paedophile to paedophile. With Lying Beside You there are a range of dodgy characters (including a cop and a forensic scientist) in addition to a vengeful serial kidnapper, none of whom have been in informal care or the formal care system. Evie, now living in Cyrus' home, helps to solve the crime. External Website

Radio & Podcast Episode 5. Person With Care Experience - BBC Sounds Small Axe Ashley John-Baptiste and Dr Sylvan Baker discuss the experiences of Black children in care in the UK. External Website