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Sport Simone Biles - Artistic Gymnast Simone Biles Simone Arianne Biles (b. March 14, 1997) is an Olympic Gold Medallist. Born in Columbus, Ohio, the third of four siblings. Her birth mother, Shanon Biles, was unable to care for Simone or her other children – Adria, Ashley, and Tevin. All four went in and out of foster care. 🌟Simone's silver medal in the floor exercise final in Paris 2024 Olympic Games tied her as the second-most decorated female gymnast in Olympic history, a total of 11 medals.🎉 She is also the youngest living person to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2000, Biles' maternal grandfather, Ron Biles and his second wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, began temporarily caring for Shanon's children in the north Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, after learning that his grandchildren had been in foster care. In 2003, the couple officially adopted the two youngest, Simone and Adria. Ron's sister, Shanon's aunt Harriet, adopted the two oldest children. With a combined total of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals, Biles is the most decorated American gymnast and the world's third most decorated gymnast, behind Belarus' Vitaly Scherbo (33 medals) and Russia's Larisa Latynina (32 medals). External Website

Films/Videos Elf 2003 On Christmas Eve, an orphan crawls into Santa's sack & taken to North Pole. After the child is discovered, the elves name him Buddy after his diaper's brand label & Papa Elf adopts him. When Buddy discovers he's not an elf travels to New York to search for his biological father. External Website

Radio & Podcast What Just Happened? LRB Conversations 2021 A conversation between David Trotter and Joanne OLeary about the novels and stories of Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973). It was the cleft between heredity and environment that influenced Elizabeth Bowen to become a writer, says David Trotter. Elizabeth Bowen was orphaned at the age of 13, her second dislocation, the first being the move from Ireland to England after her father died when she was 6. Those early dislocations also affected what she wrote about, Trotter insisting there "are more weird households per novel" in Bowen's work than in other comparable writers. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Burial of Ghosts Ann Cleeves 2011 Abandoned as a baby, twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew spent her childhood moving between foster homes and has had more than her fair share of troubles. Now a holiday in Morocco seems to be the perfect escape. Especially when she meets Philip, a fellow tourist. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England, only to find a solicitor's letter waiting for her. Philip Samson has died and in his will, has left Lizzie a gift of £15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy that will soon force Lizzie to confront terrifying secrets from her past life . . . External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Finding Fish: A Memoir Antwone Q Fisher & Mim E Rivas 2001 Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his mid-teens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. External Website

Writers AUTHORS V External Website

Television Shows The Golden Hour 2022 There are 2 men who were orphaned as children in the Dutch series, The Golden Hour (2022, Netflix). Both are from Afghanistan. One is a detective based in Amsterdam, the other is a terrorist. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Charles Perkins: A Biography Peter Read 1990 Charlie Perkins (1936 – 2000) was an Australian Aboriginal activist, soccer player and administrator. Charlie Perkins was born in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory; his mother was an Arrente woman and his father a Kalkadoon/Irish man. At the age of 10, Charlie was separated from his family and taken to live in Adelaide, South Australia at St Francis House with Gordon Briscoe and other Aboriginal boys. Not keen on school, Charlie excelled at soccer and he played professionally for the English team, Everton, in 1957. He was the first Indigenous Australian man to graduate tertiary education, and is known for his instigation and organisation of the 1965 Freedom Ride and his key role in advocating for a "yes" vote in the Australian referendum, 1967 (Aboriginals). He had a long career as a public servant. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles The Wild Wist The Monthly 2025 In this The Monthly article (5 May 2025), Australian writer Martin McKenzie-Murry reviews the final film featuring Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits (1961). McKenzie-Murry references Monroe’s difficult childhood https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/marilyn-monroe-(actor) but insists she was “never a great actor”. “She was either too anxious or too numb, and there was a reason her lines were taped inside props – such as drawers – during the shooting of Some Like It Hot.” McKenzie-Murry goes on to argue that it should be possible to both acknowledge her suffering and appreciate her achievements without “exaggerating” her talent. https://www.themonthly.com.au/martin-mckenzie-murray/2025/05/06/wild-wist External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Ash Museum Rebecca Smith 2021 1944. The Battle of Kohima. James Ash dies leaving behind two families: his ‘wife’ Josmi and two children, Jay and Molly, and his parents and sister in England who know nothing about his Indian family. After the death of James, the English family step in and send Jay and Molly to boarding school in England. Josmi dies and the children never see their mother again. Later in the novel as teenagers they come to London to live with Jucinda who is a friend of their aunt. 2012. Emmie is raising her own daughter, Jasmine, in a world she wants to be very different from the racist England of her childhood. Her father, Jay, doesn’t even have a photograph of the mother he lost and still refuses to discuss his life in India. Emmie, whose mother dies when she was young, finds comfort in the local museum – a treasure trove of another family’s stories and artefacts. Little does Emmie know that with each generation, her own story holds secrets and fascinations that she could only dream of. Through ten decades and across three continents, The Ash Museum is an intergenerational story of loss, migration and the search for somewhere to feel at home. External Website

Films/Videos The Importance of Being Earnest 2002 Film adaption of the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde. Background: He was found as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station, in the cloakroom. The bag was left in the Brighton Line cloakroom. He was discovered by Thomas Cardew, who adopted him and made him guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew.Jack Worthing is living in foster care with landowner and JP, Thomas Cardew. Jack is a respectable member of the community, but he pretends to have an irresponsible younger brother, Ernest. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Walter Isaacson 2011 Walter Isaacson's biography of adoptee and computer entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, is based on over 40 interviews Isaacson undertake with Jobs' family members, friends and enemies. Jobs' need for control, his passion and artistry are all talked about, yet Jobs did not ask for control over the book Isaacson wrote. External Website

Children's Fiction Goodnight Mister Tom Michelle Magorian 1981 The story of young Willie Beech, evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir I've been bloody lucky: the story of an orphan named Jimmy Butt Felicity Dargan 2006 Jimmy relives each colourful episode of his childhood as an orphan growing up in the 1920s and 30s in Australia. He was fostered to 16 different families across Melbourne and country Victoria. Some families treated Jimmy well, others poorly. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience What She Left Behind Ellen Marie Wiseman (2) 2014 The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane is the setting for What She Left Behind (2014). Willard closed in 1995 and what most people know about the facility is that 429 suitcases were found in the attic during an inventory to determine what was worth keeping. The employee who found the suitcases called the New York State Museum and the museum’s historians then “catalogued and wrapped every item in the suitcases which turned out to date from 1910 to 1965” (Purcell). What Wiseman does in What She Left Behind is tell 2 stories, one of which is about Clara Cartwright who is confined to Willard after her father can no longer afford to keep her at a private institution. Clara’s suitcase is amongst those found in 1995 and it’s Isabelle Stone, or Izzy—a 17-year-old in foster care because her mother killed her father—who takes an interest in Clara’s story. As the novel unfolds, we find out why Clara—who is not insane—was locked up in Willard, what life was like for her there (including the various ‘treatments’ she was forced to undergo), and what happened to Clara’s child. External Website

Actors Eddie Murphy Eddy Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and singer. Eddie's parents split up when Eddie was three, and his mother contracted tuberculosis a year later. While their mother was sick and recuperating, Eddie and his older brother, Charlie, were put into a foster home with a Ms Jenkins for approximately 18 months. Eddie Murphy rose to fame on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which he was a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984. Murphy has also worked as a stand-up comedian and was ranked No. 10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. In some films he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character; this is intended as a tribute to one of his idols, Peter Sellers. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Fight The Fear James Summers 2019 Dumped in care as a child, young Jimmy was beaten, starved and left locked up for days; one of many victims to be abused by their caregivers. Documenting his time in care and how it shaped his life after he left, author James Summers describes the anger he holds for his abusers, the ones who took advantage of their position. Readers will be left in no doubt as to how dangerous and damaging the care system was - and still is. External Website

Television Shows A Deadly American Marriage 2025 A Deadly American Marriage (2025) is a documentary series about the murder of Jason Corbett. In 2008 Jason Corbett, an Irish widower and father of 2 children, married his American au pair Molly Martens and the couple, with the children, moved from Ireland to North Carolina. However, on 2 August 2015, Jason was killed at home – by Molly and her father, a former FBI agent. After their father’s death, the Corbett children returned to Ireland to live with their aunt Tracey Corbett-Lynch who published My Brother Jason with Ralph Riegel in 2018. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? Gonda Van Steen 2019 More than 3000 Greek children were adopted by Americans after the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) during a 13-year period from 1950. In Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? (2019), classical scholar and linguist, Gonda Van Steen, examines the circumstances precipitating these adoptions (the first large scale transnational adoption movement). She draws on a range of fields (including cultural anthropology and Greek history) to argue that anticommunism after the Greek Civil War was a significant factor in these adoptions. Gonda Van Steen uses as a case study the story of Elias Argyriadis who was executed in Athens in 1952. In 1955 authorities arranged for the adoption of his 2 daughters to an American family (the mother had died). In 2013, a son of one of the adopted girls approached Gonda Van Steen for help in finding out about his mother’s past, and thus began Van Steen’s research journey. The book also includes the testimonies of other adopted people from Greece to America and doesn’t shy away from exploring the trauma they experienced and the way they have later come together as a support network. External Website

Actors Eartha Kitt Eartha Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith; January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American singer, actress, dancer, voice actress, comedienne, activist, author, and songwriter known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby", both of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world". Earth Kitt was rejected by her mother as a small girl and sent to live first in foster care and then with an aunt. Kitt began her career in 1942 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway theatre production of the musical Carib Song. In the early 1950s, she had six US Top 30 hits, including "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil". She starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series Batman in 1967. In 1968, her career in the U.S. deteriorated after she made anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House luncheon. Ten years later, she made a successful return to Broadway in the 1978 original production of the musical Timbuktu! Kitt wrote three autobiographies.Kitt found a new generation of fans through her roles in the Disney films The Emperor's New Groove (2000), in which she voiced the villainous Yzma. External Website