Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Refugee Boy (Play) Lemn Sissay 2013 As a violent civil war rages back home in Ethiopia, teenager Alem and his father are in a B&B in Berkshire. It's his best holiday ever. The next morning his father is gone and has left a note explaining that he and his mother want to protect Alem from the war. This strange grey country of England is now his home. On his own, and in the hands of the social services and the Refugee Council, he lives from letter to letter, waiting to hear something from his father. Then Alem meets car-obsessed Mustapha, the lovely 'out of your league' Ruth and dangerous Sweeney – three unexpected allies who spur him on as Alem fights to be seen as more than just the Refugee Boy. Based on the novel by Benjamin Zephaniah, Refugee Boy is an urgent story of a courageous African boy sent to England to escape the violent civil war, a story about arriving, belonging and finding 'home'. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Inheritance Louisa May Alcott 1997 A wealthy English family, the Hamilton's, adopt an orphan who was born in Italy. A long lost letter reveals that she is related to the Hamilton's and has inherited the estate on which she has been living and working as a companion to the Hamilton's daughter. External Website

Writers Martin Buber 1878-1965 Martin Buber (1878-1965) was born in Vienna. His parents separated when Martin was 4 years of age. After the separation of his parents, the young Martin lived with his paternal grandparents in Lember, now Lviv in Ukraine. Martin Buber’s paternal grandparents were wealthy and part of the Jewish “aristocracy”. The boy was homeschooled by his grandmother and he learned to speak a variety of languages including Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Ger, Italian & English. At University, Martin Buber studied philosophy and art and he completed a PhD at the University of Vienna in 1904. Martin Buber was 60 when he migrated to Palestine – after the Nazis stopped his teaching and public lectures – and became involved in the Palestinian Jewish community. He was appointed as a professor in social philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a position he held until 1951. Buber’s major philosophic works (in English) are I and Though (1923), and 2 collections of essays, Between Man & Man (1944) and The Knowledge of Man (1965). External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Cuckoo in the Nest Fran Hill 2023 Cuckoo in the Nest follows 14-year-old Jackie Chadwick, a sharp-witted, poetry-loving teenager forced into foster care after her abusive, alcoholic father’s violence lands her in A&E, as she navigates life with a new family full of secrets during the sweltering summer of 1976. External Website

Behind the Scenes Dale Wasserman Dale Wasserman was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, the child of Russian immigrants Samuel Wasserman and Bertha Paykel, and was orphaned at the age of nine. He lived in a state orphanage and with an older brother in South Dakota before he "hit the rails". Wasserman wrote for theater, television and film for more than 50 years and is best known for the musical Man of La Mancha, a multiple Tony Award winner. He also wrote the stage play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on Ken Kesey’s novel, which has won several Tony Awards. External Website

Television Shows Three Pines 2022 Three Pines is a mystery television series starring Alfred Molina based on the novel series by Louise Penny, centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec police force. His parents died when he was a child and he was raised by an adoptive grandmother. Episode 1-2 It's Christmas in Three Pines- and once again Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team are called to investigate another murder CC who everybody disliked - even though she was killed with the entire town present...no one saw a thing. Gamache is also looking into disappearance of an Indigenous woman Blue Two-Rivers. Episode 3-4 begins with a murder in an old orphanage. It transpires that the old school, St. Anthony’s, was intricately linked to the history of Three Pines, a place where indigenous children who had been taken from their families were tortured and kept prisoners for years. Fans of Agatha Christie will enjoy the series. External Website

Writers Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Writer) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and orphaned at the age of 3. She was then raised by her maternal aunt and uncle. Frances was much influenced by her uncle as the Reverend Watkins was a civil rights activist and abolitionist as well as a Methodist minister and founder of the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. Frances took up paid work as a 13-year-old; she read and wrote in her spare time. She began publishing poems in anti-slavery journals in 1839. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1845, when she was only 20 years of age, making Francis Watkins one of the first African-American women to be published in the USA. In 1850, Frances moved to Columbus, Ohio to teach (domestic science) at Union Seminary. She was the first female teacher at the school. 3 years later, Watkins joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and gave many speeches while travelling for 8 years nationally and in Canada. She also wrote for anti-slavery newspapers—and for some she is the ‘mother’ of African American journalism—while helping slaves escape via the Underground Railroad. Watkins - who married Fenton Harper in 1860 - also became involved in the women's rights and temperance movements. She published her first (of three) novels in 1869. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Ignoring Gravity Sandra Danby 2014 An Adoption Reunion Mystery (Identity Detective Book 1) Debut novel by Yorkshire author Sandra Danby, about an ordinary family with a secret. Rose is adopted and doesn’t know it. The day she finds her mother’s hidden diary is the day she starts to search for who she really is. A story about identity, adoption, family mystery and ultimately of love, the novel connects two pairs of sisters separated by a generation of secrets. As Rose untangles the truth from the lies, she begins to understand why she has always felt so different from her sister Lily. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Other Women Lisa Alther 1985 Other Women (1985) by American writer Lisa Alther has a Care Experienced character as one of the principal characters. The narrative of Other Women revolves around an ongoing conversation between single mother Caroline Kelly and her therapist, Hannah Burke. Hannah Burke was born in Australia. After her mother died of typhoid, her father took the 4-year-old to live with his parents in England before leaving to work in Trinidad. She remembers her father as a handsome man who turned up to visit her in Hampstead, England every couple of years. Hannah experiences other losses, including that of her 1st husband in WWII and of 2 children in a house fire later while living in the USA. Through the conversations with Hannah, Caroline understands how her different background shaped her. And through hearing about the tragedies Hannah has survived, she feels more confident in moving forward with her own life. External Website

Films/Videos Finding Neverland (film) 2004 Finding Neverland is a biographical drama exploring the relationship between playwright JM Barrie (1860-1937) with the family of Sylvia and Arthur Davies who inspired him to create Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Never Grew Up. Barrie was a guardian for the Davies' boys when their mother died. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir How the Light Gets In: Writing as Spiritual Practice Pat Schneider 2013 Schneider's book is distinct from the many others in the popular spirituality and creative writing genre by virtue of its approach, using one's lived experience--including the experience of writing and being in an orphanage as a child-as a springboard for expressing the often ineffable events that define everyday life. Her belief is that writing about one's own life leads to greater consciousness, satisfaction, and wisdom. External Website

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Radio & Podcast Hay Festival - Dickens in the 21st century Start the Week 2023 Charles Dickens and other writers whose work has been adapted for contemporary times are under discussion in this Hay Festival 2023 event. Especially pertinent is the new Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (2022). Kingsolver talks about being inspired while visiting the Bleak House Museum at Broadstairs, Kent where Dickens wrote David Copperfield. On the flight back to the US, she read a downloaded version of David Copperfield and then set her adaptation in the Appalachia mountains, an area hard hit by the opioid epidemic. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mc1k External Website

Children's Fiction Don't Ask The Dragon Lemn Sissay (Author) Greg Stobbs (Illustrator) 2022 This is the story of Alem, a curious little boy who realises today is his birthday. The only problem is that Alem does not know where to celebrate, and who to celebrate with. He goes on an adventure all on his own, meeting exciting animals along the way. He befriends a bear, a fox, a treefrog, a bulldog and more. Every new friend he makes, he asks the same question: where shall I go? And every time he’s met with the same warning: ‘don’t ask the dragon . . . OR HE WILL EAT YOU’. The only thing Alem never speaks to is the tiny worm who sits on each page, perhaps it’s because the worm is so small! All alone at the top of a hill, Alem grows frustrated and helpless as he doesn’t know where to go. But someone – or something – does and Alem comes face-to-face with the dangerous dragon he was warned about. But just how dangerous is it? External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Yield Tara June Winch 2019 Award-winning Australian Wiradjuri writer, Tara June Winch (b. 1983) has written a moving novel - The Yield - about the ongoing impact of colonisation on First Nations People. Central to the story is August Gondiwindi, a young woman who returns to Australia from London on the death of her grandfather, Albert Gondiwindi. August Gondiwindi grew up in the kinship care of Albert and grandmother Elsie in the fictional town of Massacre Plains. Prior to his death, Albert Gondiwindi was writing a dictionary of Aboriginal words. Albert grew up in a Boys Home. The Yield is beautifully written and a stunning reclamation of Aboriginal language. External Website

Films/Videos Boys Town (Film) 1938 Boys Town (1938) is a film starring Spencer Tracy as Father Edward J. Flanagan. Although mostly fictional, the film is based on an actual man, Father Edward J. Flanagan, and the home he established in 1917 in Omaha, Nebraska. In the film, Father Flanagan visits a convicted murderer who talks about his dreadful childhood as a ward of the state. Flanagan is compelled to do better for homeless boys and builds a sanctuary he calls Boys Town. One boy, Whitey Marsh (Michey Rooney), challenges Flanagan’s belief that there are no bad boys. Boys Town was a box office success, earning over $2million in profit and Best Actor Academy Award for Spencer Tracy. External Website

Non Fiction Every childhood lasts a lifetime: personal stories from the frontline of family breakdown Jan Owens 1996 Stories from young people affected by the state care system in Australia, as told to Jan Owen. External Website

Writers Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson 1830-1913 Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (1830-1913) was born in Deerfield Massachusetts, the youngest of 7 children. Susan’s mother died when she was 5, and she was raised (with her sisters) in Geneva, New York by an aunt. Susan first visit Amherst when she was 16. She married Austin Dickinson there in July 1856. Throughout her life, Susan wrote essays, reviews and poems, and was published in the Springfield Republican. Susan Gilbert features as Emily Dickinson’s friend and lover in the 1st series of the American drama Dickenson (2019-2021). At the end of that series, she marries Emily’s brother, Austin Dickinson. External Website

Television Shows The Virtues 2019 After his nine-year-old son leaves for Australia with his ex, Joseph walks away from his present life and boards a boat for Ireland to confront painful memories from his childhood in a children's home External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Kiss Kathryn Harrison 1997 American writer Kathryn Harrison (b. 1961) was raised in the kinship care of her grandparents from the age of 6. Harrison was born in Los Angeles, California. Her young parents divorced when Kathryn was 6 months old. At the time, Kathryn and her mother were living with the maternal grandparents and they stayed there until, when Kathyn was 6 years old, her mother left home. In The Kiss (1997) Harrison talks about the absence of her father after her parents’ divorce. She saw him once when she was 10 and then again when she was about 20, after which she and her father embarked on an incestuous ‘affair’. External Website