Sport Leon Reid Leon Reid Leon Reid (born 26 July 1994) is a male track and field sprinter who competes for Ireland. Reid was born in Bath to an English-Jamaican father, and a mother from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was adopted by a woman whose parents were from the Republic of Ireland. Reid has self-identified as both Northern Irish and Irish. Reid represented Ireland in the 200m at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He also won a bronze medal for Northern Ireland at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. External Website

Television Shows The Bambers. Murder at the Farm 2021 The Bambers: Murder at the Farm (2021) is a 4-part documentary series directed by Louis Theroux. The documentary explores the 1985 White House Farm murders in Essex, where Jeremy Bamber was convicted of killing 5 family members – his adoptive parents, his adoptive sister & her twin sons. The series examines new evidence as well as archive footage & audio tapes. Despite being one of the few UK prisoners on a whole-life tariff, Bamber has maintained his innocence for over 35 years. External Website

Television Shows The Irregulars 2021 The Irregulars is a British mystery drama series which features 4 teenagers who have grown up in a London workhouse and who take on work solving mysteries for John Watson. External Website

Television Shows Sister Boniface Mysteries 2022 Sister Boniface Mysteries (2022) is a British detective series, a spin off from the Father Brown series. The series is set in the Cotswolds, England during the early 1960s. Sister Boniface is a Catholic nun with a PhD in forensic sciences who acts as an advisor to the local police. In the first episode, there are 4 orphans featured. 3 have grown up in the kinship care of their wealthy but abusive uncle, and 1 has grown up in an orphanage. One of the orphans is a murderer and another has been murdered. Episode 4 also has a Care Experienced Person – in the stereotypical role of a killer. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir No Way Home: The terrifying story of life in a children's home and a little girl's struggle to survive Sue Martin 2007 Sue Martin was not three years old when she began life at her first children's home- a home that could at best be described as cold and regimented; at worst, torturous and terrifying.When her mother abandoned her to the protection of the home, Sue was soon to discover that behind the welcoming doors of this reputedly kind-hearted organisation lay a world steeped in lies, cover-ups, victimisation and abuse. At its heart was Boagey, whose perverse bullying was targeted at Sue. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Stanley: Africa's Greatest Explorer Tim Jeal et al. 2011 British explorer, journalist and politician, Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), was in kinship care, foster care and the workhouse as a child. Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands. He never knew his father, who died shortly after he was born. He was abandoned by his mother, 18-year-old unmarried Elizabeth Parry, almost immediately on his birth and handed over to the care of his grandfather, Moses Parry, who lived in Denbigh, Wales. John was about 6 when his 84-year-old grandfather died in 1847. The boy was taken to live with another couple, Jenny and Richard Price, and his care paid for by 2 uncles. When the Prices decided the rate was too low, and the uncles declined to pay more or care for the child themselves, John Rowlands was transferred to the St Asaph Union Workhouse. External Website

Television Shows Lost Boys & Fairies 2024 Lost Boys and Fairies (2024) is 3 part British television series about adoption. The series has been created by Welsh playwright and screenwriter, Dafydd James, who drew from his own experience of adopting with his husband. In Lost Boys and Fairies, Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young) & Andy (Fra Free) are a gay couple who have been together for 8 years. With the support of social worker Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington) they begin the adoption process, meeting and growing fond of Jake, a boy currently in foster care. Said Daf James in an interview (https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/blog/lost-boys-and-fairies): “It's important for me to put this story on screen because it's a queer, bilingual, Welsh/English drama about adoption on the BBC, which absolutely blows my mind. If somebody would have told me that as a kid that this kind of representation was going to be in the mainstream in this way, I wouldn't have believed it. This will be the most Welsh you’ve ever heard in a primetime BBC drama.” External Website

Performing Arts Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Virginia. By the time Ella was almost 3, her parents, William and Tempie (an abbreviation of Temperance), were living in New York City. Shortly after William disappeared and Tempie began living with Joseph, or Joe, Da Silva in Yonkers, Westchester County, New York. In 1932, Ella’s mother, Tempie, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 38. For a while Ella stayed on with her half sister, Frances, and stepfather, but rumours started spreading that Joe wasn’t treating his stepdaughter well. Joe died not long after Tempie and then Frances, too, moved in with the girls’ aunt in Harlem. Ella dropped out of school and began “running numbers" which saw Ella caught by authorities and end up in the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York. She hated being there and ran away in 1934. Unable to return to her aunt’s house, in case she was caught, Ella was homeless for quite some time. Determined to “make something” of herself, in November 1934 Ella entered and won a competition for new talent at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. In January 1935 she won another competition at the Harlem Opera House, which was noted in the New York Age. Then an opportunity opened up for her in May that year when William “Chick” Webb (1905-1939) gave her a job as the vocalist for his band. The job lasted until Webb’s death, after which Ella Fitzgerald began recording and performing solo in theatres. During the 1950s Ella Fitzgerald became a bestselling recording artist. She appeared on television and in films as well as continuing to perform in theatres internationally. Ella Fitzgerald was awarded 14 Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967. Amongst numerous other awards she received an Honorary Doctorate from Harvard University in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. External Website

Fiction Featuring Care Experience How To Stop Time Matt Haig 2020 How to Stop Time (2017) by English writer Matt Haig is an historical fiction novel featuring Tom Hazzard who is over 400 hundred years old, having been born in 1581. Tom Hazzard, who looks as if he’s 41, has a condition which causes him to age one year every 15 years. He manages his extended lifespan by adopting a new life every 8 years. Tom’s mother was murdered in 1599. His father was already dead, so Tom was now orphaned. Although 18 (but not yet an adult), he looked 13. Tom was taken in by his friend, 16 year old Rose Claybrook, who is caring for her younger sister, Grace. He plays the lute for cash, meeting Shakespeare along the way. Fearing for their safety, Tom later abandons Rose & their daughter Marion. He then spends the rest of his long life searching for Marion who has the same slow-aging condition as Tom. External Website

Television Shows Blindspot 2015 The American television series, Blindspot, features an orphan character. In the first episode, a tattooed women with no memory of who she is is left in a bag in Times Square, New York City. She's 'taken in' by the FBI who work out that the tattoos are clues to crimes. Over time, it turns out that 'Jane Doe' was born Alice Kruger in South Africa. Trained to be a child soldier, she was adopted (along with her brother) by Ellen 'Shepherd' Briggs the head of a terrorist group called Sandstorm. Briggs renamed the children Remi and Roman, a connection to the ancient story of Romulus and Remus. Aside from the main story (and Jane being forced to adopt out her own daughter), in Season 2 Ep 18 there's an investigation into a foster home where new drugs are being tested on foster children. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Into the Water Paula Hawkins 2017 Into the Water (2017) by Paula Hawkins is a thriller. Nell Abbott's dead body has been retrieved from the river that runs through Beckford and Nell's sister, Jules, arrives from London to care for her 15-year-old niece, Lena Abbott. The story is about 'troublesome' women and the men who get rid of them. One man decides that it would be better for him to avoid prison for his crime otherwise his son "would have put in care. I've seen what happens to kids who grow up i care, there's not one of them that doesn't come out damaged and perverted." An odd comment from a man "damaged and perverted" enough to kill a woman and who didn't grow up in care. External Website

Poetry The Gift of Experience Your Life Your Story 2021 The Gift of Experience anthology, was published as a tribute to care experienced poet Yusuf Paul McCormack who died in 2021. The anthology features poetry from mainly care experienced voices. External Website

Radio & Podcast The wisdom of deep listening: Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann and Fleur Magick Dennis Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann 2021 Aboriginal Australia artist, activist and educator, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann (b. 1950), was in kinship care as a child. She was born in the bush near Daly River, a small town in the Northern Territory. When she was 5 years of age, Miriam was given over to relatives to be cared for, her Aunt Nellie and her Uncle Attawoomba Joe. Attawoomba Joe was a police tracker of some note, and Miriam moved between police stations with him and Nellie. Miriam learned much from her uncle about Aboriginal culture, while also being educated formally in government schools. In 1975, Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann because the Northern Territory's first fully qualified Aboriginal teacher. In this podcast, she talks about 'deep listening' the word for which is dadirri in Ngan'gikurunggurra, a Northern Territory language. External Website

Writers Soren Sveistrup Soren Svestrup (b. 1968) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was adopted as a baby and taken to live with his adoptive parents on a small remote island, Thuro in the south-east of Denmark. He returned to Copenhagen to study at university, studying history, literature and scriptwriting. He started writing episodes for television shows for Danish Broadcasting, but is best known for The Killing, a police procedural featuring a detective who was in foster care, Sara Lund. His first novel, The Chestnut Man (2019) became Netflix Series in 2021. Child protection is the theme in The Chestnut Man; one man has decided the child protection system is inadequate and he has become a vigilante on behalf of neglected children. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Tell No One Brendan Watkins 2023 In Tell No One One, Brendan Journey traces his footsteps in discovering his birth parents Brendan was 8 when he was told he was adopted (he grew up in Melbourne) – which made sense for him of why no one in his family looked alike. In his 20s, Brendan began seeking out his birth parents. He was surprised to find out that his birth mother was 27 when she ‘gave him up’. It took until 2018 before Brendan found out – via a DNA test – that he was “the son of a celebrated missionary priest.” Tell No One includes Brendan’s research on ‘children of priests’. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Bridgeburn Days Lucy Sinclair 1956 The Bridgeburn Days by Lucy Sinclair is a memoir of her childhood and adolescence spent in a children’s home in the North of England during the 1920s and 1930s. The story follows Kitty Barrowell, whose deep sense of being different shapes her experiences—from life in Cottage Number Six, where her sensitivity, stubbornness, and strong sense of justice set her apart from the other girls, to the village school, and later, as she enters adult life and takes up work “in service.” External Website

Radio & Podcast Muhammad, Cervantes and the Algarve LRB Podcast 2021 Tariq Ali talks to Thomas Jones about a newly reissued biography of the Prophet by Maxime Rodinson, and the historic prevalence of Arabic culture in the West, from Don Quixote to Trafalgar Square. External Website

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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

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Home Bird Fran Hill 2025 Home Bird, the sequel to Cuckoo in the Nest, follows 17-year-old Jackie Chadwick as she navigates ‘aging out’ of the state care system in 1979, balancing school, work, and a turbulent home life with her recently released father, while finding strength and hope through the support of teachers, former carers, and her own determination. External Website