Television Shows When Hope Calls This Canadian television series sets out to refute negative stereotypes of orphans. Set in 1916 in the small Canadian town of Brookfield, two sets - orphans themselves - run an orphanage for 6 children. Lillian and Grace were separated as girls; Lillian was adopted as a child but Grace was left in orphanages. When Hope Calls is a spin-ff from the Hallmark Channel's When Calls the Heart, which is based on a series by Janette Oke. External Website

Performing Arts Sierra Leonean-American Ballet dancer Michaela DePrince Michaela Mabinty DePrince (born Mabinty Bangura, 1995-2024) is a Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer. With her adoptive mother, Elaine DePrince, Michaela authored the book 'Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina'. She rose to fame after starring in the documentary First Position in 2011, following her and other young ballet dancers as they prepared to compete at the Youth America Grand Prix. She formerly danced with the Dance Theatre of Harlem as the youngest dancer in the history of the company and currently dances as a soloist for the Dutch National Ballet. Since 2016 Michaela has been a goodwill ambassador with the Dutch organisation War Child, based in Amsterdam. DePrince passed away in New York City on September 10, 2024, at the age of 29. Her death was publicly announced three days later through her Instagram account and the Dutch National Opera's website. As of 23rd November 2024, the cause of her death remains undetermined. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Tell Morning This Kylie Tennant 1967 The story of young girls coping with the NSW child protection system. External Website

Television Shows The Twelve 2024 The Twelve (2022) is an Australian legal drama series with the theme of family secrets in the second series which aired in 2024 and is set in a small rural town in Western Australia. Patrick Harrows (Erroll Shand) and Sasha Price (Amy Mathews) are charged with the murder of Sasha’s mother, Bernice Price (Kris McQuade). We find out early on that Patrick Harrows was in foster care as a child. He is *spoiler alert* not convicted of the crime but it turns out that he is the son Bernice Price had given up years before. We also find out during the series that one of the jurors, Claudia D’Angelo (Stefanie Caccamo), had a child at the age of 14, a child - now 10 - who is living with Claudia’s parents as their daughter, not as their granddaughter. External Website

Children's Fiction A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett 2019 When Sara Crewe is orphaned she is stripped of her lovely things and forced to work as a servant at the boarding school she once attended. A classic tale of courage and imagination. External Website

Television Shows Hollyoaks 1995 Hollyoaks (1995 – ongoing) is a long-running British soap opera. There are several characters over the years who have been in foster care. For example: • Vicky Grant (Anya Lawrence) was in foster care with Scott Drinkwell (Ross Adams). • Miley Carson (Avy Berry) is also in foster care with Scott Drinkwell. • Phoenix Hathaway (Tylan Grant) is in foster care with the Osborne family. • Nico Blake (Persphone Swales-Dawson) was in foster care with Denise (Janet Bamford) Hollyoaks has won many awards and has a regular cast of 50 characters. External Website

Actors Barbara Stanwyck Barbara Stanwyck (born Ruby Catherine Stevens; July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. When she was four, her mother died and her father abandoned her. Ruby and her brother were initially raised by their older sister, but went into a series of foster homes after Laura died. A stage, film and television star, Standwyck was known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional for her strong, realistic screen presence. She made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television. Stanwyck made her debut on stage in the chorus as a Ziegfeld girl in 1923, at age 16, and within a few years was acting in plays. Her first lead role, which was in the hit Burlesque (1927), gained praise and established her as a Broadway star. In 1929, she began acting in talking pictures, receiving her major break when Frank Capra chose her for his romantic drama Ladies of Leisure (1930), which led to additional leading roles. By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Ootlin Jenni Fagan 2024 Ootlin (2024) is the memoir of award-winning Scottish writer Jenni Fagan. Born in 1977, Jenni had something like 29 different ‘placements’ from birth until age 16, and even though she was ‘adopted’ twice and lived with the 2nd ‘adoptive’ home from the age of 5 until she attempted suicide at the age of 12. Despite an extraordinarily difficult childhood while in the Scottish ‘care’ system, Jenni did learn she could take refuge in reading and in writing. Jenni Fagan tells us at the beginning of Ootlin that her memoir began “as a suicide note” twenty years previously. Doing that writing “kept her alive” until she was ready to share her important story with the world. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shadow in the Empire of Light Jane Routley 2021 Shine's life is usually dull: an orphan without magic in a family of powerful mages, she's left to run the family estate with only an eccentric aunt and telepathic cat for company. But when the family descend on the house for the annual Fertility Festival, Shine is plunged into dark intrigue; stolen letters, a fugitive spy, and family drama mix with murder, sex and secrets, and Shine is forced to decide both her loyalties and future... External Website

Films/Videos He Even Has Your Eyes 2016 Sali and Paul and a married French-African call who finally receive a call that a 4 month old baby is available for them to adopt. Because the baby, Benjamin, is a white baby, much drama ensues as Sali's family will not accept a white baby as their grandson, the social worker subjects the couple to more surveillance that she does white couples, and the wider community assume Sali is the child's nanny, not her mother. External Website

Poets Poems From a Runaway Ben Westwood Ben Westwood was born in England and taken under the care of social services as a small child. He then constantly goes missing from foster carers and children's homes. His book, Poems From a Runaway, is a non-fiction real-life account in poetry of Ben Westwoods journey as a child runaway, constantly going missing from home. External Website

Films/Videos Louis Theroux: Saville 2016 In 2000, British-American documentary maker, Louis Theroux (b. 1970) spent 3 months or so working with the infamous Jimmy Savile (1926-2011) on a documentary about the English media personality, When Louis Met Jimmy (2000) 15 years later, he set out to find out why he was so ‘gullible’, so taken in by Savile that he missed the truth of Savile’s longstanding criminal behaviour. Louis Theroux: Savile (2016) is the result. The film includes interviews with those who were victims of Savile, including Kat who was in state care while at boarding school. It also includes interviews with those who knew and worked with Savile, some of whom still find it hard to believe Savile’s behaviour. External Website

Authors V Homecoming: Volume 1 ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience This House is Haunted John Boyne (2) 2013 This House is Haunted (2013) by John Boyne is a ghost story. The year is 1867 and Eliza Caine decides to leave London to take up a position in Norfolk as governess of 2 children at Gaudlin Hall. What she doesn't know is that she's not employed by the parents – they aren’t around – but the lawyer of the estate. What she also doesn’t know is that there is a malevolent presence at Gaudlin Hall, a presence that wants Eliza gone, like the governesses before her. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood Mary McCarthy 2000 Mary McCarthy's parents died, one day apart, in the 1918 influenza pandemic. Blending memories and family myths, Mary McCarthy takes us back to the twenties, when she was orphaned in a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There were her grandmothers: one was a blood-curdling Catholic who combined piousness and pugnacity; the other was Jewish and wore a veil to hide the disastrous effects of a face-lift. There was wicked Uncle Myers who beat her for the good of her soul and Aunt Margaret who laced her orange juice with castor oil and taped her lips at night to prevent unhealthy 'mouth-breathing'. 'Many a time in the course of doing these memoirs,' Mary McCarthy says, 'I have wished that I were writing fiction.' But these were the people, along with the ladies of the Sacred Heart convent school, who helped to inspire her devastating sense of the sublime and ridiculous and her witty, novelist's imagination. External Website

Actors Stanley J Browne Born on December 15th 1970 at The Mothers' Hospital, Hackney, East London, Stanley is the second child of four and grew up in the care system as a young boy from the age of five. After a troubled childhood alongside his struggles growing up in care, Stanley missed out on mainstream education and discovered his passion for acting at the Anna Scher Theatre in Islington at the age of twenty-three, a drama school set up for working-class students which he attended for three years before landing an acting agent. Facing despondency from playing type casting roles, Stanley took a break from acting for almost eleven years, during that time he trained as a counsellor, working with prisoners and primary school children with behavioural issues. Stanley would go on to perform Shakespeare's "Othello" (2011), touring Ireland for three months. In addition to his accomplishments as an actor, Stanley has a passion for music and art. He is a painter and charcoal artist and has a portfolio of work. Having been a singer-songwriter for over twenty years, performing at various acoustic venues across the UK. In 2021, Stanley was signed to Jacaranda Books for his memoir "Little Big Man", due to be published on October 14th 2022. External Website

Television Shows The Good Witch's Family 2020 The Good Witch's Family is a 2011 Canadian/American family film and Hallmark Channel original movie written by G. Ross Parker and directed by Craig Pryce The film stars Catherine Bell as Cassandra "Cassie" Nightingale whose parents died when she was a child and who grows up in the US foster care system. Cassie became accustomed to travelling and moving as she was passed through foster homes. She ran away and continued travelling the world and learning about many different cultures, all the while honing her special gifts. Cassie is psychic and uses her intuition (and at times, a little magic) for good reasons. Life is going well for Cassie as she settles into marriage with Middleton Police Chief Jake Russell and as stepmom to Brandon and Lori. But evil soon blows into town in the form of Cassie's long-lost cousin Abigail, who whips up wickedness like a tornado. The once peaceful Russell family bickers night and day; Jake is fired after an argument with the Mayor over a bridge expansion; and Martha, the Mayor's wife, and town busybody walks out on her long marriage. As the town divides further over neighborhood expansion, Cassie is drafted to run for Mayor. Within her once-happy marriage, her family is unraveling, and Abigail's diabolical "double, double, toil and trouble" is the apex of Cassie's misery. What's a good witch to do? External Website

Television Shows Murder is Easy 2009 A 2009 TV adaptation, with the inclusion of Miss Marple (played by Julia McKenzie), was included in the fourth series of Agatha Christie's Marple; it deviated significantly from the novel by removing some of the characters in it, while adding new ones and changing those left in. New subplots were introduced, and the murderer's motive was changed. Two new subplots surround the murders, one involving a political campaign in the village, in which one of the candidates knew about the death of Honoria's brother and was blackmailed about it, while the other focuses on Bridget. Bridget is an American who arrives in the village in order to learn about the curious circumstances of her birth (she was found near the village in a basket set adrift on the river). External Website

Authors M Mary & George: the real history behind the new drama ➝ My long-lost sister was a surrogate mother to my twins ➝ Loco Parentis Podcast ➝ Muhammad, Cervantes and the Algarve ➝ Maya Angelou (radio) ➝ Karen Menzies' hidden Aboriginal heritage ➝ Mary lawson: Crow Lake ➝ Samantha Morton on Growing Up in the Care Ssytem and Facing Adversity in the Acting World. Louis Theroux Podcast ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir The World is My Home James Michener 1992 The World is My Home (1992) is a memoir written by James A Michener who was raised in foster care. He tells the story of his remarkable life – of his love for travel and literature, of the hardwork but rewards of writing, and of his political interests. James Michener was 85 when he wrote his memoir and part of his motivation for doing so was because: “"I want the reader to see in careful detail the kind of ordinary human being who becomes a writer and then to see the complex and contradictory motivation that enables him to remain one." External Website