Autobiography/Memoir Borderline Sandie Jessamine 2021 In 1974, 15 year old Sandie was locked up in the notorious Parramatta Girls Home in NSW, renamed as the Kamballa institution. She escaped from Kamballa and 40 years later revisits her time there and explores the cruelty of juvenile incarceration. External Website

Television Shows Grey's Anatomy 2005 Grey’s Anatomy (2005-ongoing) is an American medical drama series set at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, later named the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The series follows the life of Meredith Grey ( Ellen Pompeo). One of the fellow physicians she works alongside is Alex Karev (Justin Chambers). Alex Karev was in foster care as a child for 5 years, during which time he lived with 17 different foster families. Introduced in Grey’s Anatomy as a surgical intern, Alex later specialises as a paediatric surgeon. Alex Karev’s final appearance on Grey’s Anatomy was in season 16. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton 1999 The Seven Storey Mountain tells of the growing restlessness of a brilliant and passionate young man, who at the age of twenty-Tsix, takes vows in one of the most demanding Catholic orders--the Trappist monks. At the Abbey of Gethsemani, "the four walls of my new freedom," Thomas Merton struggles to withdraw from the world, but only after he has led a peripetatic childhood in kinship care, foster care and boarding school. External Website

Authors Y The Lotus Shoes ➝ The Pillars of the House ➝ Children of Ever After ➝ The Hollow Girl ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos The Goldfinch (2019) 2019 An adaptation of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning book by Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch explores the life of Theodore Decker after his mother dies in a terrorist bombing. Theodore goes first into foster care, then lives with his alcohic and exploitative father before returning to foster care. There is another CEP character in the film, too, a friend of Theodore's, Pippa, who is in both foster and kinship care. External Website

Television Shows Colin in Black & White 2021 Colin in Black & White tells the story of African American footballer, Colin Kaepernick's teenage years. Kaepernick (b. 1987) was adopted into a white family when he was a baby. He moved with his family from Wisconsin to California at the age of 4 and began playing sport at the age of 8. In high school he played football, basketball and baseball and excelled in all codes. Wanting to play football, he accepted a scholarship from the University of Nevada in 2006 and he began playing professional football in 2011. Colin Kaepernick co-created the series and narrates sections of the story. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors David Copperfield: The Personal History of David Copperfield Charles Dickens et al. 2004 In David Copperfield - the novel Dickens described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew on his own experiences to create one of his most moving and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. It is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a novelist External Website

Authors G Cary Grant ➝ Carol Grace ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Party of Five 1994 Party of Five (1994-2000) is an American family drama series. Set in San Francisco, the series is centred on the five Salinger siblings – they are the party of five – who become orphans after their parents are killed in a car accident. 24 year old Charlie (Matthew Fox) is now head of the family, a responsibility he struggles with. The other children are 16 year old Bailey (Scott Wolf), 15 year old Julia (Neve Campbell), 11 year old Claudia (Lacey Chabert) and 1 year old Owen. The Salinger siblings take over the running of their family restaurant and over the years face many challenges, including Charlie being diagnosed with cancer and Julia dealing with domestic violence. External Website

Writers AUTHORS Z External Website

Poets Malik Al Nasir Malik Al Nasir Malik Al Nasir, formerly Mark T. Watson (born 1966, Liverpool, England) is a British author and performance poet, born to a Welsh mother and a Guyanese father. He grew up partly with his family in Liverpool and after the paralysis of his father, he was taken into local authority care. He successfully sued the government for neglect, racism and physical abuse whilst in their care, and received a public apology from Liverpool's Lord Mayor. External Website

Authors R Rachael Romero ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Agony of desertion (out of print) Melissa Barron 1994 The true story of a mother's betrayal and the devastating effects it had on her five young children. They endured a mental institution, various hospitals and a convent described as a living hell as a result of the neglect of their mother. A final betrayal was yet to come, the agony of desertion. Out of print External Website

Films/Videos Misha and the Wolves 2021 Misha Defonseca (b. 1937), who published a fraudulent Holocaust memoir in 1997, was in kinship care as a child Defonseca was born Monique de Wael in Belgiam. After her parents were arrested because her father was in the resistance, Monique was sent to live with grandparents and then an uncle. In the local community she was harshly treated, called the "daughter of the traitor" because her father apparently - while being tortured - gave up the names of other resistance fighters. Defonseca and her husband moved to the US from Paris in 1988 and Defonseca began telling her story - of living in the forests around Germany and being protected by wolves - to the local Jewish community, including a book publisher, Jane Daniel, who encouraged her to write what became a best selling book. Conflict between Defonesca and Daniel resulted in Daniel being sued for $22.5 million. The 2021 documentary, Misha and the Wolves, tells the story about how Misha Defonseca was caught out being dishonest. Evelyne Haendel, a Belgian genealogist, Holocaust survivor, and what the documentary calls a 'hidden child' - Evelyne was a Jewish child protected in a Catholic school - was key to uncovering the truth. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles ‘12 Mighty Orphans’ film to premiere in Fort Worth, TX in 2020 | Fort Worth Star-Telegram Stefan Stevenson 2019 The film “12 Mighty Orphans,” which is based on Jim Dent’s book about a high school football team made up of orphans at Fort Worth’s iconic Masonic Home in the 1930s, will have an authentic Fort Worth look. The filmmakers insisted on it. External Website

Authors S Don't Ever Cry ➝ How the Light Gets In: Writing as Spiritual Practice ➝ The Long Way Home ➝ Back on the block: Bill Simon's story ➝ My Name Is Why ➝ To Learn is to Live: Education Nourishes Self-Worth ➝ Our Betty ➝ The girl in the locker: the true story of twins abandoned by their mother to a life of abuse, and their survival and fight for freedom ➝ Fight The Fear ➝ No Ordinary Liz: An extraodinary story of life and family ➝ A Tertiary Moment ➝ Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood ➝ Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands ➝ A Tuesday Thing ➝ The Day I Stopped Crying: A Journey Towards Belonging ➝ Palimpsest ➝ The Boy Adeodatus ➝ Better than Happiness: The true antidote to discontent ➝ The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley ➝ Desperate Hearts ➝ The Boy Who Loved Books: A Memoir ➝ Beyond the Orphanage Years ➝ Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir ➝ Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours ➝ Burnished: Burnside Life Stories: A collection of life accounts from residents of Burnside Children's Homes, Sydney ➝ The Bridgeburn Days ➝ A pavane for another time ➝ Out of the Forest ➝ Tortured ➝ Trash Bag Tales ➝ Barbara Sumner ➝ A personal journey towards healing and redress ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Superman (film) 2025 There’s been controversy about the 2025 Superman film (with David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman & Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane) as some have interpreted it as the fictional country Bavaria being Israel invading Palestine (Jarhanpur in the film). According to James Gunn, who wrote & directed the film, the conflict in the Middle East beginning 7 October 2023 wasn’t happening when he came up with the idea of the film. The film concludes with Superman reflecting positively on being in care with his parents, Martha (Neva Howell) & Jonathan (Pruitt Taylor) Kent. External Website

Cartoons Animation - "Someone to..." a short film about foster care 2010 This is a short animation made for the BAAF (British Association for Adoption and Fostering). The story was written with young people in foster care, and narrated by them. Directed and edited by Geoff Johnston, animation by Jarek Radecki. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Emigrants W G Sebald (2) 1992 The Emigrants (1992) by WG Sebald is an award-winning collection of 4 stories involving characters the narrator has been involved with. In the 4th story, the narrator befriends German-Jewish painter Max Ferber. He finds out that Max was 15 years old when his parents had him flown to safety in England in 1939. In England, Max stayed with his Uncle Leo in Bloomsbury, close to the British Museum and finished his schooling “at a third rate public school at Margate…” Instead of going to New York when Uncle Leo does in 1942, Max finishes school and moves to Manchester, which is where the narrator meets him. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis J D Vance 2018 The Vance family story begins hopefully in post-war America. J. D.'s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) due to JD's mother's addiction and his father's abandonment, ("Mamaw" and "Papaw") in Ohio. JD graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of ‘Hillbilly Elegy' plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. External Website