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Television Shows Silo 2024 Silo (2023) is an American science fiction television series based on the Silo novels by Hugh Howey. In Series 2, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) discovers another silo, Silo 17, in which “Solo” (Steve Zahn) is hidden away in the fault. *Spoiler Alert* Towards the end of the series we find out that Solo is Jimmy Conroy and the only survivor of a rebellion. Jimmy was 12 when he was orphaned. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women Jenny Hartley 2008 Jenny Hartley's 2008 book, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, tells the fascinating story of Charles Dickens setting up a refuge for girls and women where they were trained as domestic servants and then set out to the colonies. Urania Cottage was funded by philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts but Dickens was involved from the outset, organising furniture and detailing how the Cottage was to be run. The Cottage had room for 13 girls (some as young as 14) and young women and on entering Urania they had to agree to migrating after 12 months or so. Jenny Hartley estimates 100 girls emigrated during the 12 years Dickens was involved. Many then disappeared, but she's managed to trace the descendants of some. External Website

Films/Videos A Little Princess (Film) 2020 A Little Princess is a 1995 American family drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Set during World War I, it focuses on a young girl who is relegated to a life of servitude in a New York City boarding school by the headmistress after receiving news that her father was killed in combat. Loosely based upon the 1905 novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this adaptation was heavily influenced by the 1939 cinematic version and takes creative liberties with the original story. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Choice or Constraint in Everyday Life Judith Anne Brooker 2015 Judith describes the opportunity she had as a mature woman to attend Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. She uses the skills she was learning in sociology to think about her life as a rebellious 14 year old who was made a ward of the state. External Website

Television Shows Who is Erin Carter? 2023 Who is Erin Carter? (2023) is a British thriller (Netflix) Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad) is a teacher in Barcelona, Spain. However, she has an interesting backstory as a child raised in the UK care system and who is now raising a child not her own. Erin Carter's settled, comfortable life is threatened when she is at a supermarket where a holdup takes place. Erin's self-defence skills encourage a local police officer to enlist her in his investigations. In the ensuing action, Erin Carter is on the right side of the law, although the behaviour of both cops and crims is questionable. External Website

Films/Videos Everyone Provides Kinship Care 2017 For American foster care alumnus, Adrian McLemore, instead of more children going into the foster care system, it would be better if more went into kinship care. Adrian's perspective comes from having been in foster care, and of providing care for his niece and nephew. He talks poignantly of what it was like being taken from his family - he felt like he'd been kidnapped - and driven to a new 'home' with people he didn't know. The couple turned out to be terrific foster parents, but he still thinks kinship care is preferable. External Website

Writers Sally Bayley Sally Bayley's early life was so blighted by neglect that she put herself into care aged 14 and didn’t see her family for the next 12 years. In 1990, She was the first child to go to university from West Sussex County Council Care services. She studied at St Andrews university, and then went to America, where she taught aesthetic education in midwestern schools and universities and foundation arts courses to adults in inner city Ohio. 'Girl with Dove' is part memoir, part fiction. Growing up in a dilapidated house by the sea where men were forbidden, Sally’s childhood world was filled with mystery and intrigue. Hippies trailed through the kitchen looking for God – their leader was Aunt Di, who ruled the house with charismatic force. When Sally’s baby brother vanishes from his pram, she becomes suspicious of the activities going on around her. What happened to Baby David and the woman called Poor Sue? And where did all the people singing and wailing prayers in the front room suddenly go? Girl with Dove combines the voices of literary characters with those of her real-life counterparts, Girl With Dove reads as a magical series of strange encounters, climaxing with a comic performance of Shakespeare in the children’s home where Sally is eventually sent. No Boys Play Here is a coming of age story told through Shakespeare. In Sally Bayley’s childhood, the men were often missing. Missing because they were drunk, or out of work, or in prison, or wandering. Or missing because their behaviour had provoked women to ban them from the house. The man who was around for Sally was Shakespeare, and he brought men with him to fill the gaps. Sally grew up with a troupe of sad kings and lonely heroes. Her mind ran away from home with Falstaff and Prince Hal, with deceivers and mavericks and geniuses. In her signature and extraordinary style, this is Sally’s story of her childhood – one lived with darkness snapping at heels, with real and imagined people passing through interchangeably, and with trauma a spiky memory to be skirted and avoided. Inventive, literary and adventurous, this is a story of poverty, missing fathers, sons and a testament to the way that great literature and its characters can guard an imagination against the bad. Bayley is currently a Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford. She also teaches on the Sarah Lawrence visiting programme at Wadham College, Oxford. External Website

Sport Richie Bray Richie Bray Aboriginal Australian footballer Richie Bray (c. 1938 - 2017) was a member of the Stolen Generations, Richie Bray lived in a group home, St Francis House, at Semaphore in South Australia. He went on to play Australian Rules Football for the Port Adelaide football club, in the state competition between 1959 and 1965. External Website

Television Shows Cigarette Girl 2023 Cigarette Girl (2023) is an Indonesia series based on the eponymous book by Ratih Kumala. The story moves between the 1960s and early 2000s. In the 1960s, Raja (Ario Bayu) begins work at a kretek (Indonesian cigarette) factory. He falls in love with his boss’ daughter, Jeng Yah (Dian Sastrowardoyo), but the couple aren’t able to marry. On his deathbed in 2001, Raja sends his youngest son to find Jeng Yah. Lebas (Arya Saloka) locates Jeng Yah’s daughter who **spoiler alert** doesn’t know she has been raised by an aunt rather than by her mother. External Website

Television Shows Tell Me Your Secrets 2021 Tell Me Your Secrets is an American thriller which challenges stereotypes of Care Experience People. Lily Rabe stars as Emma Hall, a young woman who was in foster care from the age of 14. Although she is thought to have aided a serial killer (no backstory told for him), it's the respectable people in town who are the villains. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography Jim Tully 2003 A bestseller in 1924, Jim Tully takes us across the seamy underbelly of pre-WWI America on freight trains, and inside hobo jungles and brothels while narrowly averting railroad bulls (cops) and wardens of order.Written with unflinching honesty and insight, Beggars of Life follows Tully from his first ride at age thirteen, choosing life on the road over a deadening job after years in an orphanage, through his teenage years of learning the ropes of the rails and -living one meal to the next.Tully’s direct, confrontational approach helped shape the hard-boiled school of writing, and later immeasurably influenced the noir genre. Beggars of Life was the first in Tully’s five-volume memoir, dubbed the "Underworld Edition," recalling his transformation from road-kid to novelist, journalist, Hollywood columnist, chain maker, boxer, circus handyman, and tree surgeon. External Website

Radio & Podcast Foundling: Found Episode 7, Mo Jamil Julian Brown 2021 Foundling: Found is a podcast series, hosted by care-leaver Julian Brown, that investigates the real stories of care, from the Foundling Hospital archives dating back to 1739, right through to the present day. Setting the stigma surrounding those with care experience against those real stories. Over the course of 12 episodes, Julian will be joined by some very special guests as he uncovers the fact and the individuals behind the media and literature fiction. On today's episode, Julian is joined by the incredible singer, recording artist and all round amazing person Mo Jamil, about his experiences of both care, leaving it and the power of writing music to process that. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Imprint Weekly Podcast The Imprint Weekly Podcast The Imprint is an independent, nonprofit daily news publication dedicated to covering child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and educational issues faced by vulnerable children and families. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Quiet You Carry Nikki Barthelmess 2019 Victoria Parker knew her dad's behavior toward her was a little unusual, but she convinced herself everything was fine—until she found herself locked out of the house at 3:00 a.m., surrounded by flashing police lights. Now, dumped into a crowded, chaotic foster home, Victoria has to tiptoe around her domineering foster mother, get through senior year at a new school, and somehow salvage her college dreams . . . all while keeping her past hidden. But some secrets won't stay buried—especially when unwanted memories make Victoria freeze up at random moments and nightmares disrupt her sleep. Even worse, she can't stop worrying about her stepsister Sarah, left behind with her father. All she wants is to move forward, but how do you focus on the future when the past won't leave you alone? External Website

Actors Rosie Perez Rosa María Perez (born September 6, 1964) is an American actress, choreographer and community activist. Her mother Lydia Perez spent time in and out of jail. Perez’s mother gave birth to her youngest child while incarcerated. Rosa was for a time raised by an aunt and then like her siblings went through group homes and foster care. Her and her siblings were often split up. She was then transferred to a group foster home and lived in foster care in New York and Peekskill until age eight, and was still legally considered a ward of the State of New York until age twelve. Her mother and aunt frequently visited, and her father made an unsuccessful custody bid at one point. When she was in third grade, Perez learned that she had a speech impediment. She had a strict Catholic upbringing, which she has credited to the influence of the nuns during her childhood. She eventually moved in with paternal aunt, Ana Dominga Otero Serrano-Roque, and attended Grover Cleveland High School, in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens. Her mother died of AIDS-related complications in 1999. When her mother died she was living in poverty in Queensbridge houses. External Website

Writers Somerset Maugham 1874-1965 William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was born at the British embassy in Paris where his father, Robert Ormond Maugham, worked as a lawyer. William became an orphan when he was ten years old. First, his mother, Edith Mary, died of tuberculosis in 1882 and then his father died two years later of cancer. Young William was then sent to live in England with his paternal Uncle Henry MacDonald Maugham (1828-1897), and his Aunt Sophia, an unhappy experience for him. As soon as he could, William left home. He was six when he went to Germany to study literature at Heidelberg University. On his return to London, he tried out accountancy and then medicine. During his training to become a medical doctor, Maugham published his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897). Maughan went on to become among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.Both Maugham's parents died before he was 10, and the orphaned boy was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. He did not want to become a lawyer like other men in his family, so he trained and qualified as a physician. His first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service. He worked for the service in Switzerland and Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 in the Russian Empire. During and after the war, he travelled in India, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He drew from those experiences in his later short stories and novels. External Website

Performing Arts Australian singer-songwriter Archie Roach A member of the Stolen Generations, Archie Roach is an iconic Australian singer-songwriter. Archibald William Roach: b. 8 January 1956-d. 30 July 2022. In 1956, Roach's family, along with the rest of the area's Indigenous population, were re-housed on Rumbalara mission. At the age of 4, Roach and his sisters, along with the other Indigenous Australian children of the stolen generations, were forcibly removed from their family and placed in an orphanage. After two unpleasant placements in foster care, Roach was eventually fostered by Alex and Dulcie Cox, a family of Scottish immigrants in Melbourne. Alex Cox would sing traditional ballads and introduced Roach to guitar and keyboards. Roach said "He was a big influence on me — a good influence. I'll love him to the day I die." At the age of fifteen, Roach was contacted by his natural sister, who told him their mother had just died. He spent the next fourteen years on the streets, battling alcoholism. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Bitter Almond: A Memoir Doug Terry 2025 Set in the early 60s, Bitter Almond charts the disintegration of a family’s life as, evicted from their country cottage, five young boys find themselves swallowed up by the old workhouse system, still going strong. After a summer spent with their mother in a “concentration camp” of collapsing wooden huts they are moved to the infamous Newington Lodge in Southwark before, in a final separation, being sent on to Eastry Childrens home as “looked after kids” placed in the care of the state. Abuse, belittling and military-style discipline follow. Yet hope remains. What will it take for Mum and Dad to get their children back? External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp The Mousetrap Agatha Christie 1952 The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, then it re-opened on 17 May 2021. The play began life as a short radio play written as a birthday present for Queen Mary, the consort of King George V. It was broadcast on 30 May 1947 under the namee Three Blind Mice starring Barry Morse. The story drew from the real-life case of Dennis O'Neill, who died after he and his brother Terence suffered extreme abuse while in the foster care of a Shropshire farmer and his wife in 1945 whilst World War Two was raging throughout Europe: ‘Terence O'Neill and his brother, Dennis, were taken to a foster home in 1945 on the Shropshire, England farm of Reginald and Esther Gough. The two suffered from beating and neglect, and later that year, Dennis died at the age of 12 from injuries he had sustained.' The play is based on a short story, itself based on the radio play, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as it ran as a play in the West End of London. The short story has still not been published within the United Kingdom but it has appeared in the United States in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories. External Website

Television Shows The Asunta Case 2024 The Asunta Case (2024) is a Spanish crime drama series inspired by true events. After the adoptive parents of 12-year-old Asunta (Iris Wu) report her missing, her corpse is found on the side of the road near her parents’ country house. The police investigation led to both parents being charged with the murder of their daughter. https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81632782 External Website