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Fiction featuring Care Experience The Chess Raven Chronicles Violet Grace 2018 The Chess Raven novels are the creation of Australian wife-husband team Kasey Edwards & Christopher Scanlon under the pen name Violet Grace. In The Girl Who Fell (2018), 16-year-old Chess Raven has been in the UK state ‘care’ system since she was 3. Not far into the novel, Chess finds out she is a princess, “Queen in the Ascendant” of House Raven and part Fairy. The Girl Who Chose (2019) continues the story of Chess Raven finding her way in this new reality, including that she is expected to marry Crown Prince Victor of House Grigio. External Website

Authors D Grecce Simpliefies Citizenship Restoration ➝ Indian orphans weave award-winning movie magic ➝ Denmark says sorry to children of failed experiment ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos The Butcher Boy (film) 2007 The Butcher Boy is based on the 1992 novel by Irish writer, Patrick McCabe. It is billed as a black comedy. It tells the story of Francis "Francie" Brady who ends up in an 'reform school' where he is sexually abused by one of the priests. When Francie returns home his long term friend has made friends with someone else, his alcoholic father dies, and Francie descends in to a fantasie life of increasing brutality. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Ronnie Archer-Morgan shares his fostering story Ronnie Archer-Morgan 2023 Antiques Roadshow Expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan has appeared on the One Show and talked about how important his foster family were and how they saved his life. He said: “I discovered what it was like to become part of a loving family.” External Website

Films/Videos Take Care of Maya 2023 Take Care of Maya (2023) is a documentary (on Netflix) telling the story of what happened to Maya Kowalski when she was 10 and admitted to the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida. Hospital staff expressed concern about the treatment Maya was already receiving (under medical guidance) and alerted the child protection team. Dr Sally Smith, the medical director the child protection team, decided that Maya’s mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. May Kowalski was then removed from the care of her parents and held in state custody (while remaining in hospital). The Kowalskis have filed a lawsuit against Johns Hopkins, with a trail set to start in September 2023. External Website

Radio & Podcast Sherlock Holmes The Rest is History 2021 In this episode, historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss the enduring influence of the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes has remained a popular literary character for more than a century and has influenced the detective genre considerably. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Sunlight Pilgrims Jenni Fagan 2017 The Sunlight Pilgrims is set in a caravan park in the north of Scotland. Here. a group of people who live on the margins are waiting out an extreme winter. One character, Stella, is a transgender teenager who is terrified at the relentless march of puberty and who we see struggling to gain acceptance. External Website

Authors A America ➝ A Cry from the Streets ➝ A Family Affair ➝ A child of the state ➝ Anne of Green Gables (tv film) ➝ August Rush ➝ A Little Princess (Film) ➝ Alex Cross (film series) ➝ Angels & Demons ➝ A Mother Finds Her Lost Child After a 40-year search ➝ Atomised ➝ A Thousand and One ➝ A.I. Artificial Intelligence ➝ Auntie Mame ➝ A Walz Through the Hills (Film) ➝ A Chance in the World ➝ An Angel for May ➝ Trade Secrets 1: Maria Amidu on making a living and working internationally ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos The Proposal 2009 The Proposal is a 2009 American romantic comedy film. The plot centers on a Canadian executive who learns that she may face deportation from the U.S. because her visa renewal application was denied. Determined to retain her position as editor-in-chief of a publishing house, she convinces her long-suffering personal assistant to temporarily act as her fiancé. It transpires 'Margaret Tate's' parents died when she was 16, and she is portrayed as unable to have romantic relationships. External Website

Films/Videos Morvern Callar (Film) 2002 Alan Warner’s 1995 novel, Movern Callar, was adapted for film in 2002. The film stars Samantha Morton as Movern Callar, a young woman who was in foster care as a child. When finding that her boyfriend has killed himself, Movern sends his unpublished manuscript to the publisher he recommends – but claims the novel as hers. External Website

Sport Scott Hamilton – Olympic Figure Skater Scott Hamilton Hamilton was born on August 28, 1958 in Toledo, Ohio.[4] He was adopted at the age of six weeks by Dorothy (née McIntosh), a professor, and Ernest S. Hamilton, a professor of biology,[5] and raised in Bowling Green, Ohio. He has two siblings, older sister Susan (his parents' biological daughter) and younger brother Steven (who was also adopted).[6] He attended Kenwood Elementary School. When Hamilton was two years old, he contracted a mysterious illness that caused him to stop growing. After numerous tests and several wrong diagnoses (including a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis that gave him just six months to live), the disease began to correct itself. His family physician sent him to Boston Children's Hospital to see a Dr. Shwachman. He was told the doctor had no idea what was wrong and to go home and stop the diets in order to live a normal life. Years later, it was determined that a congenital brain tumor was the root cause of his childhood illness External Website

Autobiography/Memoir A Fortunate Life - Fremantle Press A B Facey 1981 Albert Facey grew up in kinship care. He was first sent to work at the age of 8, become a labourer, a farmer, a jackaroo, and serving in WWI. External Website

Authors C 45 Care Leaver Friendly Ways ➝ Interrogating ‘poor outcomes’ and disrupted care in children’s fiction ➝ Care leavers in the ivory tower ➝ It’s My Journey: It’s My Life! Care leavers and access to social care files ➝ Popular perceptions of disrupted childhoods ➝ Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America ➝ The Perceived Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Care-Experienced People ➝ (Pseudo)motherhood, care constructs and the geography of the nuclear family: class, gender and the suburbs in contemporary fiction ➝ Rewriting the Past: Gerard Mannix Flynn's Nothing to Say and James X ➝ Back to Top

Performing Arts Singer, songwriter, pianist, composer Ray Charles Ray Charles Robinson (1930 – J2004) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called "Brother Ray." He was often referred to as "The Genius." Charles was blinded during childhood due to glaucoma. Ray's mother, Aretha Robinson, found a local school to accept him; he then attended a special school in Floriday from 1937-1945. After his mother died when Ray was 14, the boy moved to Jacksonville to with a friend of his mother's. He played piano in bands and gained a reputation as a talented musician. In 1947, Charles moved to Tampa and then on to Seattle, Washington where he formed his own band. He pioneered the soul music genre and received numerous awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. External Website

Authors P Who Cares?: Young People in Care Speak Out ➝ Orphan texts: Victorian orphans, culture and empire ➝ Jacqueline Wilson (New Casebooks) ➝ Enuring Stuggle: St Mary's Tardun Farm School ➝ Orphans of the Living: Growing Up in Care in Twentieth-Century Australia ➝ The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness ➝ Back to Top

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Oranges are not the only fruit Jeanette Winterson 1987 This is the story of Jeanette based on Winterson's own story of adoption. Brought up by an abusive mother as one of God's elect - zealous and passionate, Jeanette seems seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1993 This is Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings published 1969 by Random House. The book follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and disabled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. This is the first of her autobiographical books. Angelou structures her book so that it presents a series of lessons about how to resist racism and oppression. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Barbara Sumner Barbara Sumner 2020 Tree of Strangers (2020) is a memoir by New Zealand writer and film producer, Barbara Sumner. Sumner was adopted as a 10-day old baby. She begins the search for her family of origin when her eldest child is born and she finally sees someone who physically resembles her. For Sumner, closed adoption is “government level gaslighting” because an adopted person – by dint of a new birth certificate – is (or was before laws changed) legally regarded as born to their adopting parents. External Website

Television Shows Reacher 2022 A series based on Lee Child's first book, Killing Floor (1997) and featuring his Jack Reacher character, is available Amazon Prime. The series stars Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher, retired military police officer, self-described hobo, and seeker after justice. In the first series based at Margrave, a small town in Georgia, Reacher teams up with a couple of local cops to solve a major crime and numerous murders. One of the the local cops is Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) who, in Episode 6, explains that both her parents died in a car accident when she was a child. She was in the back seat of the car. Roscoe then lived with an uncle. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Ruin Dervla McTiernan 2018 In her debut novel The Ruin (2018), the 1st in her Cormac Reilly series, Irish-born writer Dervla McTiernan includes several Care Experienced characters. There is Jack Blake who was orphaned as a 5-year-old, then adopted by the family who had taken him in as a foster child. Jack becomes an engineer but at the age of 25 is a victim of murder. There is also Tom Collins who was in and of foster care as a child but is now a lawyer with his own practice. Tom’s sister, also in and out of foster care, is a recovering drug addict. *spoiler alert* the man responsible for Jack Blake’s murder was initially in an orphanage because his mother was 16 & on her own. When his mother married 9 years later, Danny was removed from the orphanage and went to live with her & his step-father. External Website