Search Results

Children's Fiction The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 2020 Mark Twain's great American masterpiece, the tale of a boy's picaresque journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'. Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim. External Website

Authors T Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Child in Foster Care ➝ Back to Top

Authors E Eden's lost ➝ Fairyland ➝ Water under the bridge ➝ Careful, He Might Hear You (novel) ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Celestial Bodies Jokha Alharthi 2019 Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Celestial Bodies tell of Oman's evolution through the prism of one family's losses and loves. One of the characters, Salima, was in kinship care as a child. She lived with her uncle until she was 13, with her mother visiting occasionally. Salima returned to live with her mother at 13 but was promptly married off by her uncle. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice Laurel Corona 2008 The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice (2008) by American writer Laurel Corona tells the story of 2 sisters who were left as babies at the Ospedale della Pieta. Chiaretta marries into an aristocratic Venetian family and Maddalena becomes a violinist and Vivaldi’s muse. External Website

Authors L The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Gil Scott-Heron saved my life Malik Al Nasir 2011 After a traumatic childhood Abdul Malik Al Nasir seemed to be heading for jail or an early death. Then, at the age of 18, he met the famous poet and musician – with remarkable consequences. Article as told to Simon Hattenstone External Website

Radio & Podcast Mother of Lion, Sue Brierley, tells her story Sue Brierley 2020 Sue Brierley is the adoptive mother of Saroo, the Indian boy whose remarkable story of finding his Indian birth mother is told in the film “Lion”. Sue has now written her side of the story, and she talks to Paul Barclay about her book, "Lioness". External Website

Authors O On the Missed Crimean Connection between Leo Tolstoy and Florence Nightingale ➝ How the Mainstream Media Sees Us ➝ The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read? ➝ Filming The One Percent ➝ How Being Privately Fostered In White Families Impacted These People's Lives And Identities ➝ Back to Top

Authors C Hiraeth (a novel): Representations of Care-Experience in Literature ➝ How do care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging? ➝ Orphans and Class Anxiety in Nineteenth-century English Novels ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Lesson in Motherhood Paula McLain 2011 Here, a woman who was in kinship and foster care as a child writes about having to learn how to be the mother she always wanted for herself. External Website

Films/Videos Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story 2022 During the 2 part documentary (on Netflix) Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, Welsh journalist Meirion Jones, speaks of being concerned as a small child at the free access Jimmy Savile had to Duncroft Approved School in Surrey. He would visit his aunt there; she was the Head of the School which housed girls aged between 15 & 17 who were regarded as "emotionally disturbed". Surrey police in 2015 said there were 46 sexual assaults by Savile of 22 of those girls while Savile was visiting there. There are other allegations of Savile sexually abusing children in other children's homes too. External Website

Authors F Larissa FastHorse ➝ Antwone Fisher ➝ Back to Top

Authors A Inside Out: An Autobiography ➝ Letters to Gil ➝ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ➝ Would It Surprise You To Know…? ➝ All at Sea: Memories of a Coram Boy ➝ Wards of the state: An autobiographical novella ➝ Thrown Away Child ➝ Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union ➝ Dirty Laundry ➝ Deliver Me From Evil ➝ Ushant: an autobiographical narrative ➝ A Place to Call Home ➝ Labeled: Ward of the State ➝ Fifty-One Moves. ➝ Let Me Tell You. Mending a Broken Childhood ➝ Back to Top

Authors T The people making a difference: the woman who created a community for fellow adult adoptees ➝ The Vatican's Children ➝ Intelligent women are dangerous, no?’ Samantha Morton on sexism, success and survival ➝ The care leaver who made a number one album ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Pernille 2025 Netflix series: Pernille is a frontline child welfare service caseworker and single parent, balancing the demands of her job with caring for her two teenage daughters, teenage nephew (due to the death of her sister), and an aging father. Her professional role exposes her to vulnerable children—some neglected or abused—and she grapples with high-stakes decisions about child safety . External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Grecce Simpliefies Citizenship Restoration Schengen News 2025 According to this article in Schengen News, Greece is working to facilitate a process of recognizing the citizenship of Greek-born adoptees. There are approximately 3,000 to 5,000 Greek-born adoptees (with the majority living in the USA) some of whom have made the request that they be re-registered as Greek citizens. Secretary General of the Ministry of the Interior, Nasos Balerbas has stressed “anyone born to a Greek citizen, even if they are adopted, and their parents ask to renounce Greek citizenship, has the right to take it back whenever they want.” External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Life She Was Given Ellen Marie Wiseman (4) 2017 The Life She Was Given (2017) tells the story of 9-year-old Lily Blackwood who, in 1931 and after years of being confined to the attic at her home, Blackwood Manor, is sold to a circus. Lily has albinism and her mother is ashamed of her. For years, Lily works several acts—such as the Ice Princess from Another Planet and the Albino Medium—without pay for Barlow Brothers’ Circus. Lily’s story is interwoven with that of 18-year-old Julia Blackwood, also of Blackwood Manor, who is left the property after the death of her mother in 1956. Like Lily, Julia can’t abide the ill treatment of animals and she rejects some of the old money-making practices at Blackwood Manor, such as having foals taken immediately from their mothers and fed elsewhere. Much of Julia’s story is devoted to what her parents had keep secret. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Living in Adoption's Emotional Aftermath The New Yorker 2023 A poignant and disturbing article by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker on the difficulties faced by adult adoptees. Deanna, for example, talks about how being adopted means you “first have to lose your entire family”. MacFarquhar writes about the different generations of adoptees in the US, such as those from the “Baby Scoop Era”, unmarried woman compelled to “relinquish” babies between the end of WWII and the passing of Roe v Wade in 1973. The majority of these would have been closed adoptions, whereas the most recent generation have open adoptions. She covers the history of adoptions from Korea, driven initially by Christians and often involving the adoption of children from orphanages who had living parents. MacFarquhar says: “You can divide adoption into three main categories: plausibly invisible…in which a child is adopted by parents of the same race; transracial adoptions; and international adoptions.” Also discussed is the “re-homing adoption adoption market, for children whom parents had adopted but didn’t want anymore, or couldn’t keep.” External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Donor Helen Fitzgerald 2011 Care Experienced people are crucial to the plot in The Donor (2011). Mum, who was in foster care, leaves her husband and twin daughters when the girls are three. She doesn’t re-enter their lives for 13 years when dad is desperately seeking a kidney transplant donor. Mum is so ravished from using heroin for decades her kidney is not an option. She is not only drug addicted, she’s also addicted to a fellow former foster kid, a violent man who beats her. External Website