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Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphan of Salt Winds Elizabeth Brooks 2019 Virginia begins the novel as a ten-year-old orphan, alone in a puzzling and difficult adult world. Having grown up in a children’s institution, without the safety-buffer of familial love, she is unable to take anything for granted. She sees her newly adopted home, Salt Winds, with a vision that is both anxiously perceptive and childishly skewed. England, 1939. Ten-year-old Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds, a secluded house on the edge of a marsh, to meet her adoptive parents?practical, dependable Clem and glamorous, mercurial Lorna. The marsh, with its deceptive tides, is a beautiful but threatening place. Virginia's new parents' marriage is full of secrets and tensions she doesn't quite understand, and their wealthy neighbor, Max Deering, drops by too often, taking an unwholesome interest in the family's affairs. Only Clem offers a true sense of home. War feels far away among the birds and shifting sands?until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh, and Clem ventures out to rescue the airman. What happens next sets into motion a crime so devastating it will haunt Virginia for the rest of her life. Seventy-five years later, she finds herself drawn back to the marsh, and to a teenage girl who appears there, nearly frozen and burdened by her own secrets. In her, Virginia might have a chance at retribution and a way to right a grave mistake she made as a child. External Website

Films/Videos One Life 2023 One Life (2023) is a British biographical drama starring Anthony Hopkins as humanitarian Nicholas Winton (1909-2015). Johnny Flynn plays the young Nicholas Winton who, in 1938, embarks on a project of removing endangered Jewish children in Prague and taking them to safety in England. Winton and his small team (which included his mother (Helena Bonham Carter)) brought 669 children by train from Prague to England where they’d organised foster parents to care for them. It wasn’t until 1988, however, that Winton was recognised for his contribution to saving these children’s lives. External Website

Sport Walter Tull Walter Tull Walter Tull (1888-1918) was a Black British professional footballer and British Army officer. Walter Tull was born in Kent, England. His father was a carpenter and son of a slave in Barbados. His mother was from Kent. In 1895, Walter's mother died, followed by his father in 1897. Walter and his brother, Edward, were sent to the Methodist Children's Home and Orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Walter Tull began playing professional football for Tottenham Hotspur in 1909. He then transferred to Northamptown in 1911. He was the first Northampton Town player enlist in the British Army when war broke out in 1914. Tull was killed in action on 25 March 1918. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir One of the Family: Why A Dog Called Maxwell Changed My Life Nicky Campbell 2021 Nicky Campbell was born Nicolas Andrew Argyl Campbell in 1961. He was born in Edinburgh and adopted when he was four days old. Now a radio and television presenter and a journalist, Nicky Campbell began his career writing jingles. In 2004, Nicky Campbell wrote Blued Eye Son about his experience of being adopted. He has won numerous awards, including being appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2015. External Website

Writers Rob Watts Rob Watts is an Australian sociologist. He was in state care as a small child until he was adopted by his foster parents. Rob Watts went on to become an academic, with degrees from La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. He is the co-author of many books which examine Australian social life. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A Hidden Intersectionality: Care Experience, Disability Lys Eden; Jamie Crabb 2021 "Care Experienced as an identity is becoming increasingly embraced by a growing community. This community has lived experience of being looked after with support of state intervention in a range of settings such as foster, residential, kinship care and adoption. In this blog, 2 Care Experienced People, Lys Eden and Jamie Crabb, talk about their lived experience of the intersection of care experience, disability and neurodiversity." External Website

Writers Georges Perec 1936-1982 Georges Perec (1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. Georges Perec was born in Paris to Jewish migrants from Poland. His father died defending France in 1940. After the Nazis occupied France, Georges was taken by the Red Cross to Villard-de-Lans, to be cared for by his paternal aunt and her husband. Georges Perec stayed in the care of his relatives after the war. He went for some years to school in Paris and also boarded at Étampes, approximately 48km from Paris. In his final year at school, a philosophy teacher encouraged the boy to become a writer, but he was 30 before his first book was [ib;osjed/ External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Shadow Baby Margaret Forster 2000 Evie is born in Carlisle in 1887, and her earliest memories are only of being brought up by the woman called her grandmother. Evie and Shona, born almost seventy years apart, are women of very different personalities. And Hazel – unmarried and pregnant in the 1950s, her mother arranges for her to have her child in Norway, where it is adopted out and Hazel never wants to hear or think about it (and she considers the child an ‘it’) again.But as their stories unfold, it becomes apparent that they share much more than their yearning to find the mothers they never knew. External Website

Non Fiction Behind The Wall. The Women of the Destitute Asylum Adelaide, 1852-1918 Mary Geyer 1994 Behind The Wall: The Women of the Destitute Asylum, 1852-1918 (1994) by Mary Geyer is a history of some women who once lived at the Destitute Asylum in Adelaide, South Australia. According to Mary Geyer, in March 1856, there were "65 women, 30 men and 43 children" housed at the Destitute Asylum. Amongst the vignettes of women Geyer includes in her book are those of woman born in the Asylum's Lying-in home. For example, Olive Doran (b. 1885) went into kinship care after her mother unmarried died, and Ada Deare (b. 1900) went into foster care. Adelaide’s Migration Museum (opened in 1986) now occupies the site on which the Destitute Asylum once existed. External Website

Radio & Podcast Fielding's Tom Jones In Our Time 2024 In this episode of In Our Time, host Melvyn Bragg and 3 academic guests discuss Henry Fielding’s novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) The History of Tom Jones is a comic, a bildungsroman and a picaresque novel and is among the earliest English works categorised as a novel. It is a highly organized novel in 3 parts. It’s also long, over 800 pp. In summary, Squire Allworthy finds a foundling, an abandoned baby sleeping in his bed. Allworthy organises for the infant to be raised in his household. As a young man, the kind and generous but headstrong Thomas or Tom is banished by Allworth and heads out on adventures, getting into trouble along the way to London. Eventually, Tom marries Sophia, the woman he loves. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00202lf External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Care leavers met with Jacqueline Wilson to debate the true reality of care Eve Livingston 2018 When the latest book about Tracy Beaker saw her end up in a less than fairytale adult life, there was anger from many who'd had childhoods in care. The Big Issue arranged for her creator Jacqueline Wilson to meet care-experienced readers to hear why they felt cheated External Website

Authors K 15,000 Kids and Counting: The Search (Adoption) ➝ Karen Pirie ➝ Killing Eve ➝ Kleo ➝ Kaleidoscope ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Paid for: My Journey Through Prostitution Rachel Moran 2013 When you are fifteen years old and destitute, too unskilled to work and too young to claim unemployment benefit, your body is all you have left to sell. Rachel Moran came from a troubled family background. Taken into State care at fourteen, she became homeless and got involved in prostitution aged fifteen. For the next seven years Rachel worked as a prostitute, isolated, drug-addicted, outside of society. Rachel s experience was one of violence, loneliness, and relentless exploitation and abuse. Her story reveals the emotional cost of selling your body night after night in order to survive loss of innocence, loss of self-worth and a loss of connection from mainstream society that makes it all the more difficult to escape the prostitution world. At the age of 22 she managed, with remarkable strength, to liberate herself from that life. She went to university, gained a degree and forged a new life, but she always promised that one day she would complete this book. This is Rachel Moran s story, written in her own words and in her own name. External Website

Films/Videos The Rise of Skywalker 2019 The final episode of the 9-part "Skywalker saga", featuring Rey, an orphan character. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Autobiography of Maxim Gorky: My Childhood, in the World, My Universities Maxim Gorky 2001 Maxim Gorky, like Leo Tolstoy, was primarily an autobiographical author, and the material here is considered amongst the greatest of his writings. Not only do they give the astonishingly varied life of Gorky from his childhood in kinship care, but they also provide us with an unforgettable picture of one of the most crucial generations in Russian life and history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The autobiography begins at the age of five and ends with Gorky secure in his position as one of the leading Russian writers. External Website

Films/Videos The Unforgivable 2021 The Unforgivable (2021) starring Sandra Bullock covers kinship and foster care. The film is based on the 2009 miniseries, Unforgiven, written by Sally Wainwright. Sandra Bullock plays Ruth Slater who has served time for a violent crime and is now desperately trying to get her life back on track. She's also trying to locate her sister, Katie, but the child protection system isn't helpful and the foster parents would prefer Katie not be told anything about her past. The film explores the topic of how some people are willing to give a former prisoner a second chance, but many others arent. External Website

Films/Videos Good Will Hunting 1997 A mathematical genius, Will Hunting is discovered working as a janitor at MIT. The young man is mentored by an MIT professor and the story follows Will as he goes to therapy and learns to reevaluate his relationships - past ones in foster care and current ones with his best friend and girlfriend. External Website

Radio & Podcast Philip Pullman (BBC) World Book Club 2005 In this podcast talks about his His Dark Materials fantasy triology which features Care Experienced character, Lyra Bbelacqua. He stresses the importances of having helpful characters in children's stories so that children - no matter their circumstances - know there are good people in the world. External Website

Radio & Podcast Jenni Fagan 12 Podcast Episodes Jenni Fagan 12 Podcast episodes featuring Jenni Fagan including: Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden in conversation with Adam Biles - Shakespeare and Company; Jenni Fagan: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 62 Granta; Episode 595: Luckenbooth. Jenni Fagan - The Avid Reader Show. External Website

Films/Videos Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues 2022 What is being called the “definitive documentary” about the life of Louis Armstrong was directed by Sacha Jenkins and released in October 2022. The documentary, called Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues, uses rich archival material to tell the story of the legendary jazz trumpeter - his childhood, rise to fame, constant encounters with racism, pioneering of improv…There’s also the story of how Armstrong invented scat singing. Louis Armstrong might well have been seen by many as a “subservient Uncle Tom figure” during the Civil Rights movement, but that’s not the man Jenkins shows. Instead, Louis Armstrong is presented as a courageous man negotiating a tight rope between the mainstream white community and the Black community he came from. External Website