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Actors Ray Liotta Raymond Allen Liotta (born December 18, 1954) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for playing Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), playing Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990) and voicing Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). Raymond Allen Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, on December 18, 1954. Having been abandoned at an orphanage, he was adopted at the age of six months by township clerk Mary and auto-parts store owner Alfred Liotta. His adoptive parents each unsuccessfully ran for local office; he recalls attending parades to hand out flyers for his father's run. Liotta has a sister, Linda, who is also adopted. He has said that he knew he was adopted as a young child and presented a show-and-tell report on it for kindergarten. He hired a private detective to locate his biological mother in the 2000s, and subsequently learned from her that he is mostly of Scottish descent. He has one biological sister, one biological half-brother, and five biological half-sisters. External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Mommie Dearest Christina Crawford 2017 An adaptation of Christina Crawford's 1978 memoir in which she describes considerable abuse at the hands of adoptive mother, American film star Joan Crawford. External Website

Children's Non-fiction Maya Angelou Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara 2016 The book follows Maya Angelou (who was in kinship care) from her early traumatic childhood to her time as a singer, actress, civil rights campaigner and, eventually, one of America's most beloved writers. External Website

Films/Videos Santa Claus: The Movie 1985 Santa is exhausted by his ever-growing workload & he enlists an assistant, Patch. Santa befriends homeless orphan boy Joe & takes him for a ride in his sleigh. They meet wealthy orphan girl Cornelia, who befriends Joe. Patch designs a machine which falls apart & he resigns. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Dingo! my life on the run Max Williams 1980 Max Williams was first put into an institution at the age 10. His life of being institutionalised and trying to escape was then set. It took him 40 years to break the pattern of crime and imprisonment. External Website

Writers Ronald Wilson Ronald Wilson (1922-2005) was born in Geraldton, Western Australia. His mother died when Ronald was 4 and he and his brother were mostly cared for by a housekeeper. Then when Ronald was 7, his father suffered a debilating stroke and spent the remaining 5 years of his life in hospice care. Ronald's older brother, then 14, began caring for the boy, along with the housekeeper. He enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1941 and then served in RAAF until 1946. Wilson graduated with a Bachelor of Law from the University of Western Australian in 1949, then studied for a Master in Law from the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson had a ten-year term as the Western Australian Solicitor-General and in 1979 became the first Western Australian to be appointed to the High Court of Australia. Amongst other publications, Sir Ronald Wilson is co-author (with Mick Dodson) of the hugely significant Bringing Them Home Report (1997), a report of the findings from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Late Show Michael Connelly 2017 The Late Show (2017) is the first in Michael Connelly’s series of Renee Ballard books. Ballard is a detective working the night shift in Hollywood, having to relinquish her investigations each morning to the detectives on day shift. Working the night shift is punishment meted out to her for making a formal complaint about being sexual harassed by a supervisor. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream Barack Obama 2007 Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama was in kinship care as a young boy. He was born to an American mother of European descent and an African father. His mother, Ann Dunham (1942–1995), and father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936–1982), married in Wailuku, Hawaii, on February 2, 1961, six months before Obama was born. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964. He visited his son in Hawaii only once, at Christmas 1971, before he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982, when Obama was 21 years old. In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. Obama lived with his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro, in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii.Obama chose to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents for high school at Punahou when his mother and half-sister returned to Indonesia in 1975, so his mother could begin anthropology field work. 'The Audacity of Hope' is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The Uses of Orphans Alison Kinney 2015 The literary orphan belongs to no world except that of narrative opportunity, but some real orphans seek to change the world with rage External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Story of the Pink Cat: An Exploration of the Ways Care-Experienced People Navigate Inheritance by Delyth Edwards & Rosie Canning Delyth Edwards & Rosie Canning 2023 This chapter in Inheritance Matters Kinship, Property, Law Suzanne Lenon (Anthology Editor) , Daniel Monk (Anthology Editor) sets out to interrogate the practice(s) of inheritance from the viewpoint of families with care experience, with the aim of instigating further research and for inheritance to be acknowledged in policy. Using their own examples as a care experienced person (Rosie) and the daughter of a care experienced mother (Delyth), they consider what is inherited, such as stories and identities through storytelling and the possession and creation of material objects of significance. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Second Victim: Daisy's Story Daisy and Emma Barnaby 2023 Content Warning: There are references to child sexual abuse, suicide and there is also strong language and racist language at times. Listener discretion is advised.This is the story of Daisy - a black baby adopted into a white family in rural 1970’s England. Alienation and loss of identity dominate her childhood. After discovering she was conceived through child rape, she begins a lifelong mission to find and prosecute her birth father using the only irrefutable evidence left. Her own DNA. But justice isn’t just for her birth mother. She too, is a victim, and when the world around her doesn’t agree, she is forced to reckon with external and internal powers out of her control. External Website

Children's Fiction Pippi Longstocking Astrid Ross Lindgren et al. 2002 Pippi is nine years old, lives alone with a horse and a money, and does exactly as she pleases. She has no mother and her father is king of a cannibal island, so she has learnt to look after herself. She gets up when she likes, never goes to school, talks a great deal, keeps a chest of gold coins under the bed, and is unexpectedly strong. The book is full of her marvellous escapades. External Website

Radio & Podcast More to the story... Meeting your mum as an adult Background Briefing (4a) 2024 In this update to the story of adoptee Anna (Background Briefing 3 August 2024), we hear from Anna after she goes to South Korea and meets her birth mother for the first time. She finds out that her birth mother never wanted to give her up, she was pressured into this by her husband and her doctor. External Website

Artists Marina Abramović Marina Abramović (b. 1946) was born in Belgrade. Because her parents were busy with their careers, she lived with her grandmother for 6 years. “Until then,” she writes, “I hardly even knew who my parents were. They were just two strange people who would visit on Saturdays and bring presents. When I was six, my brother was born, and I was sent back to my parents.” Abramović writes of having a very unhappy childhood with her parents. “I grew up with incredible control, discipline, and violence at home. Everything was extreme.” Drawing and performing were ways for her to survive. Despite the difficulties, Marina Abramović remained at home with her parents until she was 29. Marina Abramović eventually moved to Amsterdam. She had several postings to European academies, has given many performances and become known as the “grandmother of performance art” and in 2007, founded the Marina Abramović Institution, a non-profit foundation for performance art. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Fear of the Collar Patrick Touher 2008 Sent to an industrial school in Dublin at the age of seven, Patrick Touher was forced into a tough regime of education and training, prayer and punishment, strict discipline, and fearful nights. Artane Industrial School demanded absolute obedience and absolute submission; Patrick's eight-year stint there was an education in cruelty and fear. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 2020 The Picture of Dorian Gray is a Gothic and philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Dorian was orphaned since birth due to the cruelty and manipulation of his grandfather (his mother’s father). Dorian’s grandfather, Lord Kelso, proves to be a mean and cruel old man through characterizations given by Dorian as well as third parties, such as Lord Henry’s Uncle George. Fully aware of her father’s role in the death of her husband, Dorian’s mother, Margaret Devereux, never spoke to her father again and died within a year. Leaving behind her orphaned son to be raised in a hostile environment, under Lord Kelso’s care. When a naïve young Dorian arrives in Victorian London, he is swept into a social whirlwind by the charismatic Lord Wotton, who introduces Dorian to the pleasures of the city. Henry's friend Basil Hallward paints a portrait of Dorian to capture the full power of his youthful beauty. When the portrait is unveiled, Dorian makes a flippant pledge: he would give anything to stay as he is in the picture - even his soul. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Before and After: the heartbreaking true stories of a notorious adoption scandal Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate 2021 From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a corrupt adoption scheme at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis, selling over 5,000 children to adoptive parents. Many of these children were not orphans but had been stolen from poor families, single mothers, or were falsely told their babies had died. Before and After recounts the emotional and shocking stories of survivors trying to reconnect with their birth families. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox Lois Banner 2013 This is a biography of Marilyn Monroe which includes the account of Norma Jean's time in foster, kinship and residential care. Lois Banner explores Norma Jean's difficult childhood and her journey from there to making it in Hollywood, marrying Joe DiMaggio and her tragic end. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People The Mystery of Charles Dickens A.N.Wilson 2020 In this pychological analysis of the great Victorian writer, A.N.Wilson explores how Charles Dickens drew on his own experiences as a child to create his popular novels. Wilson uses the idea of the 'false self' to suggest that Dickens protected his inner child from public scrutiny yet told the story of his childhood through his books. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Way It Is Now Garry Disher 2022 20 years after the disappearance of his mother from her post-separation home, Charlie Deravin has been suspended from his job as a city police officer and is back living in the family shack in a beachside town on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Melbourne and within a walk-along-the-beach distance from where Rose Deravin disappeared. As Charlie begins picking up the threads of his mother’s unsolved case, he tries to track down the creepy guy, Shane Lambert - a former foster child - who was once a tenant in his mother’s house. Charlie suspects Lambert killed Rose Deravin, although his older brother, Liam—and many others in the beach community—think it was her cop husband, Rhys Deravin. External Website