News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Foster families who ignore race are participating in a pernicious form of racism Derek Owusu 2018 Derek Owusu draws on personal experiences to argue that there needs to be more education about the needs of black children when being fostered External Website

Films/Videos The Real Mo Farah 2022 The Real Mo Farah tells the astonishing story of how the British-Somali athlete was trafficked to the UK as the age of nine. In the UK, Mo Farah worked as a domestic servant. After telling his PE teacher about his plight, he went into foster care. School staff helped the boy gain British citizenship so that he could compete in international running events. Mo Farah has won 4 Olympic gold medals. He received an Order of the British Empire, a CBE in 2013 and another, a knighthood, in 2017. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience James Percival Everett 2024 Percival Everett’s most recent novel, James (2024), is a retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A crucial difference between the novels is that whereas it is a white boy narrating the original story, in James, the narrator is Jim, an escaped enslaved man. Jim says he was sold when he was born and then sold again. Jim – James – may be an escaped enslaved man, but he is also a literate man conversing during hallucinations and in his dreams with the enlightenment greats – Voltaire, Rousseau, John Locke. External Website

Television Shows Killing Eve 2021 Killing Eve is a British black comedy-drama spy thriller television series, produced in the United Kingdom by Sid Gentle Films for BBC America and BBC iPlayer. The series follows Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British intelligence investigator tasked with capturing psychopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). Villanelle had been left in an orphanage as a child. She had a violent reputation who once developed an obsession-turned relationship with an older, nurturing, French instructor— and who castrated the instructor's husband because of Villanelle's jealous infatuation with her. She worked for an organization called The Twelve. External Website

Sport Josh Jenkins Josh Jenkins Australian Rules Football star, Josh Jenkins (b. 1989), was in foster care from the age of two. When Josh was two years old, he and his baby sister, Jenna, were placed with Edith and George Casey. The couple had already raised six children of their own and lived on a hobby farm in Swan Hill, Victoria. When Josh was four and a half, the couple became permanent carers for the siblings, now including a younger brother, Jordan. Josh had a very positive experience in care. Edith, who Josh calls ‘Grandma’, is one of his biggest supporters and he attributes his successful football career to the stability, nurture and encouragement of his foster mother. External Website

Television Shows Quirke 2014 Quirke is a 3 part television series based on the first 3 novels by Benjamin Black, pseudonym for Irish novelist John Banville. Quirke was orphaned as a child. He grew up in a catholic church run industrial school in Carricklea in County Sligo, west of Dublin. The boy was later taken out of the school and adopted by wealthy Judge Garret Griffin. As an adult he trained to become a pathologist but in the series he does some sleuthing too. Quirke stars Gabriel Byrne as the pathologist and aired in Ireland and the UK in 2014. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Two O'Clock Boy Mark Hill 2017 Two O'Clock Boy features at least six care experienced stereotypical characters: murderers; thieves; drug addicts. Connor Laird frightens people: he's intense, he's fearless, and he seems to be willing to do anything to protect himself and those he loves. He arrives in the Longacre Children's Home seemingly from nowhere, and instantly becomes hero and villain to every other child there. Thirty years later, someone is killing all of those who grew up in the Longacre, one by one. Each of them has secrets, not least investigating cop DI Ray Drake. One by one the mysteries of the past are revealed as Drake finds himself in a race against time before the killer gets to him. Who is killing to hide their secret? External Website

Actors Joy Bryant African American actor Joy Bryant (b. 1974) was in kinship care as a child. Joy Bryant was conceived when her 15-year-old mother was sexually assaulted. Bryant’s grandmother took on the care of her granddaughter, encouraging her to read & emphasising the importance of education. Joy Bryant went to Yale University on a full scholarship. After 2 years (& impacted by the death of her grandmother), Bryant left Yale & became a successful model. She was later chosen by Denzel Washington to stay in Antwone Fisher (2002), a biographical drama inspired by the true story of Antwone Fisher https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/antwone-fisher From 2010 to 2015 Bryant played Jasmine Trussel in the NBC drama series, Parenthood. She also hosted her own talk show Across the Board with Joy Bryant from 2012 to 2014. Joy Bryant played Marie Wallace in the series For Live (2020) and Helen Grace in The Spiderwick Chronicles (2024). Joy Bryant Paleyfest 2013 — Photo by Genevieve, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0 External Website

Non Fiction We Don't Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 Fintan O'Toole 2021 Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 (2021) includes references to: a. The industrial schools system (established in 1868 to care for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children”) and the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland (established 2000). The Commission resulted in what’s known as Ryan Report (2009) and which concluded that many children had been subject to physical, sexual and emotional violence. Perpetrators were protected to preserve the reputation of the institutions. b. Magdalen Laundries: institutions in which pregnant girls and women were incarcerated, often for the rest of their lives. Many of the children born in the laundries were transferred to the industrial schools. c. Mother-and-baby homes, from which many children were sold to American families in a lucrative adoption business endorsed by the state. O’Toole also tells the story of the Dunne family, one of whom in 1961 tried to expose the brutality going in the industrial schools but who couldn’t get his book published. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir An Accident of Birth Alex Blum 2026 An Accident of Birth: A story of adoption and identity (20260) by American Alex Blum (b. 1955) tells the story of Alex suddenly finding out at age 60 that he has 3 biological brothers. Alex was adopted as a baby, which he always knew, but there was a secrecy around his origins. Alex Brand spent his working life helping others tell stories, but in An Accident of Birth he is the focus. From the back cover: “ More than a memoir of adoption and reunion, An Accident of Birth explores the universal emotional landscape shared by adoptees everywhere. With candid, affecting prose, Blum examines the pressures of “adoptee gratitude,” the quiet ache of alienation, and the lifelong search for identity, connection, and home.” External Website

Films/Videos The Chaperone (2018) 2018 The Chaperone is based on the novel of the same name about the woman who chaperoned ant Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman was once an orphan who was part of the Orphan Train, which placed children with midwestern families (who also happened to be strangers!). Cora was lucky, her foster family treated her well but some of the kids became the victims of terrible cruelty, and more hunger, and more neglect—it all depended on who adopted them off of the train. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever. External Website

Actors Margaret Rutherford English actor Margaret Taylor Rutherford (1892-1972) was raised in kinship care from the age of 3. Margaret Taylor Rutherford was the child of William Rutherford Benn and Florence Rutherford. In 1883, William Rutherford Benn murdered his father and was subsequently held at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum until 1890. After he was released in July 1890 he changed his surname to Rutherford. After Margaret was born in 1892, William Rutherford – a journalist - took his family to live in Madras, India. 3-year-old Margaret was sent back to England to live with her aunt, Bessie Nicolson, after her pregnant mother killed herself. (Margaret’s father also returned to England and was detained again in Broadmoor from 1904). Margaret Rutherford because her working life as a teacher before moving into acting during her 30’s. She became well known after her performances on stage as Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1939 and in 1941 as Madam Arcati in Blithe Spirit. Rutherford made her film debut in 1935 and had a successful film career playing in a range of comedies. In the early 1960s she played Agathie Christie’s Miss Jane Marple in 4 films, by which time she was in her 70s. Dame Margaret Rutherford, publicity photograph, c.1960. Photographer unknown. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons External Website

Children's Fiction Home Girl Alex Wheatle 2019 Home Girl is the story of Naomi, a teenage girl growing up fast in the foster care system. It is a wholly modern story which sheds a much-needed light on what can be an unsettling life--and the consequences that follow when children are treated like pawns on a family chessboard. Home Girl is fast-paced and funny, tender, tragic, and full of courage--just like Naomi. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience North Woods Daniel Mason 2023 The North Woods (2023) is a historical fiction novel by American writer Daniel Mason. North Woods tells the story of the inhabitants of a single house in the woods of New England across the centuries. Told in fragments, the novel begins when a couple absconding from a Puritan colony and concludes when a young researcher crashes her car near the site. Two of the inhabitants are the twin daughters of a soldier, Charles Osgood, who discovers the house and decides to plant apples on the land around it. The daughters, Alice & Mary, are in kinship care with their aunt for several years before Charles takes them to live with him. Aged 4 when they begin living in the house, the sisters spend the rest of their lives together there. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream Jane Plitt 2000 Martha Matilda Harper was born the 4th child of Beady Gifford Harper and Robert Harper, a tailor, in a village on the outskirts of Oakville, Ontario. At the age of 7, when her father was facing a significant financial crisis, Martha was sent away to live with relatives and become a servant. At the age of 12, she moved in to become a servant for strangers. In 1882, Martha relocated to Rochester in New York. One of her tasks for her new employer, Luella Roberts, was to care for Luella's hair and it wasn't long before friends of Luella's began requesting Martha to care for their's too. At a time when servants cared for their mistresses’ hair, or hairdressers came to the house, Martha set up in business in a shop, investing her life savings of $360 to open the Harper Hairdressing Parlor. Eventually women asked her to set up business in other cities and Harper decided to duplicate her shop throughout the country. She hired working classing women, primarily former domestic servants, to operate franchises. Harper chose locations for shops, provided products, training and advertising, and often the initial funding for women to set up shops (which they paid back) and then as women—or agents as Harper called them—ran their own businesses, Harper was able to significantly expand hers. According to Jane Plitt, Martha Matilda Harper became the “mother of American retail franchising” (p. 62) although her model did not become a dominant one until the second half of the 20th century. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Charles Perkins: A Biography Peter Read 1990 Charlie Perkins (1936 – 2000) was an Australian Aboriginal activist, soccer player and administrator. Charlie Perkins was born in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory; his mother was an Arrente woman and his father a Kalkadoon/Irish man. At the age of 10, Charlie was separated from his family and taken to live in Adelaide, South Australia at St Francis House with Gordon Briscoe and other Aboriginal boys. Not keen on school, Charlie excelled at soccer and he played professionally for the English team, Everton, in 1957. He was the first Indigenous Australian man to graduate tertiary education, and is known for his instigation and organisation of the 1965 Freedom Ride and his key role in advocating for a "yes" vote in the Australian referendum, 1967 (Aboriginals). He had a long career as a public servant. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience They Do it with Mirrors (novel) Agatha Christie 1985 Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in a Victorian mansion which doubles as a rehabilitiation centre for 'delinquents'. Her fears are confirmed when a youth fires a revolver at the administrator, Lewis Serrocold. Neither is injured. But a mysterious visitor, Mr Gilbrandsen, is less fortunate – shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building. Also features an illegitimate child. The novel's first proper film adaptation was the 1985 television film Murder with Mirrors with Sir John Mills as Lewis Serrocold, Bette Davis as Carrie Louise, Tim Roth as Edgar Lawson and Helen Hayes as Miss Marple. A second adaptation was aired on 29 December 1991 in the BBC series Miss Marple starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, Jean Simmons as Carrie-Louise Serrocold, Joss Ackland as Lewis Serrocold and Faith Brook as Ruth van Rydock. The film was basically faithful to the novel, with the exception that Alexis survives the attack on his life. Also, Ruth van Rydock is present at the house when the first murder takes place and Lawson attempts to swim across the lake, and does not use a rotted boat. A third adaptation was aired on 1 January 2010 for the fourth season of the ITV series Agatha Christie's Marple, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, Penelope Wilton as Carrie Louise, Brian Cox as Lewis Serrocold, and Joan Collins as Ruth Van Rydock. This adaptation had several changes and additions. External Website

Films/Videos Limbo 2023 Limbo (2023) is an Australian film starring Simon Baker as Detective Travis Hurley. Hurley is despatched to an outback town to investigate the disappearance and suspected homicide of an Aboriginal girl, Charlotte Hayes, 20 years previously. Charlotte’s sister, Emma (Natasha Wanganeen) and her brother, Charlie (Rob Collins) don’t expect much from the inquiry. Nothing comes from Hurley’s questioning except the sad knowledge that the police have never treated the Aboriginal people in town very well. By the time he’s summonsed back to town, however, Charlie seems more willing to care for his children, who have been living with Emma. External Website

Writers Gertrude Stein American writer, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an international celebrity in her day. She was an important contributor to American literature, influencing other writers such as Ernest Hemingway. Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the youngest of 5 children. When Gertrude was young, the family travelled to Europe – both parents were of German Jewish heritage – with Gertrude spending much time in Austria and France before returning to America in 1979. Gertrude Stein’s mother died in 1888 and her father in 1892. Gertrude, plus a brother & sister, moved from California to Baltimore to live with a maternal aunt. In 1893, Stein enrolled at the Harvard Annex (the precursor to Radcliffe College), following that with study at Johns Hopkin. She left Johns Hopkins to travel to Europe with her brother, Leo, in 1902. Alice B. Toklas became Stein’s lifelong companion from 1907 and with Alice’s encouragement, Stein experimented more with her writing. Her small readership increased significantly after she published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933. External Website

Writers Oprah Winfrey 1954- Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years from 1986 to 2011. Oprah Winfrey was born in Mississippi. She was named Orpah, and her single mother moved to the North, leaving the baby with her grandmother. For six years, Oprah lived on a farm with her grandmother and she credits the hard physical life of her grandmother for motivating her to have a different life. Life back with her mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was much more difficult for the young Oprah. She was raped by a cousin, and sexually assaulted by an uncle and family friend. An important later influence was her father who expected high standards of behaviour and high grades at school when she went to live with him in Nashville at the age of fourteen. By nineteen, Oprah Winfrey was a co-anchor for the local evening news. She popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue and in 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Winfrey has won many accolades and Emmy Awards. External Website