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News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles ‘This book kept me alive’: Jenni Fagan on writing a memoir of her childhood in care The Guardian 2023 By 16, the novelist had lived in more than 27 placements within the Scottish care system. She recalls the stories she created to survive and how books became her lifeline. This is an edited extract from Jenni Fagan’s upcoming book Ootlin: A Memoir (Hutchinson Heinemann) External Website

Radio & Podcast JRR Tolkien's religious legacy God Forbid 2023 In this discussion, it's the influence of JRR Tolkien's religious convictions that are under discussion. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and a ward of a priest when he was a child..The Lord of the Kings is embedded throughout with Christian symbolism. However, this is much pagan symbolism in his work as well. External Website

Television Shows Decline and Fall 2017 Decline and Fall (2017) is British comedy series based on the 1928 epynomous novel by Evelyn Waugh, Paul Pennyfeather is 'sent down' or expelled from Oxford unjustly. Because his guardian won't give him access to his inheritance, he has to make a living as a teacher at an obscure boarding school in Wales. The affable, kind and naive young man falls in love with a woman who traffics women. Because she is enormously wealthy, she is popular and 'respectable.' External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Glasgow Boys Margaret McDonald 2024 Winner of the 2025 Carnegie Medal 2025 Two boys can't remember the last time they had a hug. Meet Finlay. He's studying for his nursing degree at Glasgow University, against all the odds. But coming straight from care means he has no support network. How can he write essays, find paid work and NOT fall for the beautiful boy at uni, when he's struggling to even feed himself? Meet Banjo. He's trying to settle in with his new foster family and finish high school. But he can't forget all that has happened, and his anger and fear keep boiling over. How can he hold on to the one good person in his life, when his outbursts keep threatening his already uncertain future? External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Desperate Hearts Katherine Summers 2005 Desperate Hearts tells the story of Katherine Summers and her three sisters growing up in London's East End in the 1960s, where their violent father is caught up in the gangland world of dodgy deals, murder and the notorious Kray brothers. Times get tough, Katherine's father forces her mother into prostitution, and the family falls apart when her mother goes into hiding and the four little girls are placed in institutional care.But with the support of each other and help from an unexpected source, Katherine and her sisters gradually rebuild their lives, ending their school days in an exclusive girls school. Then, on St. Valentine's Day 1974, from an upstairs window, Katherine witnesses her father shoot her mother's lover dead in the street below. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Invisible thread Maree Giles 2001 A semi-autobiographical account of Maree Giles' time in the notorious Parramatta Girls' Home in New South Wales. External Website

Television Shows Hetty Feather 2015 With Isabel Clifton, Polly Allen, Dasharn Anderson, Eva Pope. Set in Victorian-era London of 1887, Hetty and her foster brother Gideon are forced to return to the foundling hospital where she was abandoned by her mother as a baby. Hetty and her friends hate the iron-fist regime of Matron Bottomly and gang leader Sheila. Hetty yearns to escape and go in search of her mother. 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

Films/Videos StephiRaye 2018 StephiRaye has her own YouTube channel and a series of videos - about being in foster care, advice for young people in the system, and guidance for going to college/university. External Website

Films/Videos Orphans of Isis 2019 Orphans of Isis tells the story of a courageous Sydney grandmother trying desperately to get her 3 orphaned grandchildren back to Australia from a refugee camp in Syria. ABC Four Corners reporter Dylan Welch and producer Suzanne Dredge documented the family's experience over a 4 year period. External Website

Behind the Scenes Jeffrey Seller An adoptee, Jeffrey Seller grew up in a Jewish family in Detroit. With a long held interest in musical theatre, he moved to New York after graduating from the University of Michigan and worked as a booking agent as well as producer for award winning shows such as Rent (1996), Avenue Q (2003) and In the Heights (2008). After working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights, Seller produced Miranda's show, Hamilton (2015), which has received widespread critical acclaim as well as considerable commerical success. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Ellie Simmonds on finding her birth mother: ‘During this journey I cried so much’ by Emine Saner Ellie Simmonds 2023 Eleanor May Simmonds, OBE (born 11 November 1994[1]) is a British former Paralympian swimmer. Simmonds, who has achondroplasia, became interested in swimming at the age of five. She won gold medals in the 100m and 400m freestyle events at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing.She was adopted at 3 months and this article tells of the journey to find her birth mum. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Harp in the South Ruth Park 1948 The Harp in the South is the debut novel of New Zealand-born Australian author Ruth Park (1917-2010). Published in 1948, it portrays the life of an Irish Australian Catholic family living in Surry Hills, at that time an inner city slum area of Sydney. Towards the end of her now classic novel, Ruth Park introduces 24-year-old Aboriginal Australian Charlie Rothe. Charlie Rothe knows little of his background; he thinks his parents died when he was 7 as that’s the age he was ‘adopted’ by a bagman. Charlie’s itinerant carer looked after him well as the pair travelled the roads of NSW, apprenticing him to a printer in Sydney at the age of 15 and then disappearing. Charlie Rothe becomes a part of the Darcy family after he marries the eldest daughter, Rowena (Roie). External Website

Non Fiction Empty Cradles Margaret Humphreys 1994 Empty Cradles (1994). In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire, right up until as recently as 1970. Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents were told that their children had been adopted. In fact, for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Margaret and her team reunited thousands of families before it was too late, brought authorities to account, and worldwide attention to an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Margaret continues to reunite estranged families, who are situated in Australia and the UK; and brings worldwide attention to the cause. Deported children were promised oranges and sunshine but they got hard labour and life in institutions such as Keaney College in Bindoon, Western Australia. Many were given to the Congregation of Christian Brothers, where they suffered physical and sexual abuse. External Website

Television Shows Cracker 1995 Cracker is a British crime drama series produced by Granada Television for ITV, created and principally written by Jimmy McGovern. Set in Manchester, the series follows a criminal psychologist (or "cracker"), Dr Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane, who works with the Greater Manchester Police to help them solve crimes. The show consists of three series which were originally aired from 1993 to 1995.Series 3 (1995) Episode 20 "Best Boys (Part One)" Bill Preece/Nash, a 17 year old boy who is living in a children’s care home, breaks into the factory where he is doing work experience and is found by the foreman, Stuart Grady. (note the use of two names - device) There is an unspoken but chemistry between the two and Grady lets Bill sleep on the floor in his flat. They then kill together, the young boy from the hostel being portrayed as the ringleader. This leads to the arrest of the foreman, Stuart. Episode 21 "Best Boys (Part Two)": An accident leads the police to apprehend Grady while Nash is still at large. As the police close in on him, Nash tracks down his former foster carer, Diane and her son (whose birth prompted her to abandon Bill just before she was meant to adopt him). External Website

Films/Videos Boy 2010 Boy is a movie starring James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu, and Taika Waititi. Set on the east coast of New Zealand in 1984, Boy, an 11-year-old child living in kinship care with his grandmother, younger brother and several counsins, gets a chance to know his absentee father. External Website

Films/Videos Lord of the flies (film) 1990 Since 1954, the Lord of the Flies (1954) novel - about the displacement of a group of British school boys being evacuated during war - has been adapted for other mediums. For example, it has been adapted for film 3 times, the most recent being in 1990. In the 1990 adaptation, it is an aircraft carrying 24 American military school cadet boys whose displacement occurs when their place crashes onto an uninhabited jungle island in the Pacific Ocean. The pilot of the plane and only adult survivor is seriously injured and delirious. First, in 1963 and directed by Peter Brook. Second, in 1975 a Filipino film Alkitrang Dugo was directed by Lupita Concio. Third, in 1990 the adaptation was directed by Harry Hook. The film was not a box office success. External Website

Television Shows Fool Me Once 2024 Fool Me Once (2024) is a British television series adapted from Harlan Coben novel of the same name published in 2016. The series stars Michelle Keegan as Maya Stern whose sister and husband have both been murdered. A side story in the series is finding out that Maya’s sister, Claire Walker (Natalie Anderson), had a son adopted out at birth. That child, now a young man, reconnected with his mother before she died and is delighted to be reunited with his other siblings. External Website

Films/Videos Sharper 2023 Sharper (2023) is an American thriller about a couple of fraudsters conning the super-rich. The story is told through a series of character vignettes. The movie begins with Tom (Justice Smith), a bookshop owner who is drawn to a customer Sandra (Briana Middleton) when they begin talking about her PhD project on black feminists. Sandra tells Tom that she was in foster care as a child. We find out later that Sandra or Sandy is on parole and has a long criminal history. And we know she had a difficult childhood. However, the foster care story is never confirmed. External Website

Films/Videos Kiri 20 Sarah Lancashire stars in the compelling four-part drama about the abduction of a young child, written by award-winner Jack Thorne. A young black girl who was soon to be adopted by a white family is mysteriously murdered. As the investigation continues, a social worker and others are involved in a web of lies and guilt. External Website