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Television Shows Decline and Fall 2017 Decline and Fall (2017) is British comedy series based on the 1928 epynomous novel by Evelyn Waugh, Paul Pennyfeather is 'sent down' or expelled from Oxford unjustly. Because his guardian won't give him access to his inheritance, he has to make a living as a teacher at an obscure boarding school in Wales. The affable, kind and naive young man falls in love with a woman who traffics women. Because she is enormously wealthy, she is popular and 'respectable.' External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles How Truman Capote Was Destroyed by His Own Masterpiece Literary Hub (5) 2023 In this article, Ebs Burnough asserts that Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” – an initial part of which was published in The New Yorker in 1965 – “catapulted [him] from a mere darling of the literary world to a full-fledged global celebrity on a par with the likes of rockstars and film legends.” Capote had read a New York Times article about the brutal murder of a family in Kansas. He set out to investigate, in 1959 going to visit the affected Kansas community. By 1965 his “non-fiction novel” was almost complete; he was waiting for the final moment when the 2 young men convicted of the crime were executed. Capote was deeply affected by the executions, says Burnough, who has long been a fan and is creator of the 2019 documentary, The Capote Tapes. The deaths, Burnough goes so far as to say, precipitated Capote’s decline into drug and alcohol addiction. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 The Turn of the Screw (1898) is a ghost story written by Henry James. The novella appeared in serial form in Colliers Weekly (an American magazine) between 27 January and 16 April 1898. A young woman becomes governess for 2 orphaned children who live on a remote estate. Her employment is organised by the children’s uncle. The governess becomes convinced that there are ghosts on the estate who intend to take the children. According to some commentators, The Turn of the Screw was influenced by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), including the themes of class and gender. In turn, we can see the influence of The Turn of the Screw in John Boyne’s This House is Haunted. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Seoul Searching ABC News 2024 In this article, reporters Mazoe Ford, Matt Davis & Victoria Allen explore adoptees from South Korea who now, as adults, are searching for answers about their heritage. About 200,000 children were adopted to overseas countries from South Korea after the Korean War (1950-1953) ended. There were many children orphaned in the war, but also unwed mothers were shamed into giving up their children. There is also some evidence some children were stolen. The turning point came during the 1988 Seoul Olympics and adoption numbers have fallen since. In 2022, for example, there were only 142 transnational adoptions from Korea. External Website

Radio & Podcast Jackie Kay Desert Island Discs 2016 In this broadcast, Kirsty Young interviews Jackie Kay, adoptee, writer and playwright. Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father but was adopted by a white Scottish couple. She talks about her kind and generous adoptive parents, and about much later meeting both biological parents. During the program, Jackie selected music by other Care Experienced People: Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles. External Website

Non Fiction Abby's Story Louise Allen 2020 Abby's Story is the latest book in the series Thrown Away Children by author and foster mum Louise Allen. Abby is suddenly removed from her adoptive family and taken into foster care. She has challenging behaviours that her foster mother finds difficult to imagine the origin of. External Website

Authors C Just us ➝ Alexander Hamilton ➝ Back to Top

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles ‘This book kept me alive’: Jenni Fagan on writing a memoir of her childhood in care The Guardian 2023 By 16, the novelist had lived in more than 27 placements within the Scottish care system. She recalls the stories she created to survive and how books became her lifeline. This is an edited extract from Jenni Fagan’s upcoming book Ootlin: A Memoir (Hutchinson Heinemann) External Website

Authors S Melody loses her Mojo ➝ Refugee Boy (Play) ➝ Something Dark (Play) ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos The Strays 2023 The Strays (2023, Netflix), is a British thriller starring Ashley Madekwe as an upper class woman, Neve, whose life looks ‘perfect’. Neve works as the deputy head of a privileged private school where the majority of students are white. Although everyone knows Neve is Black, Neve’s family and the wider community are all surprised when 2 Black teenagers (Jorden Myrie and Bukky Bakray) arrive to claim Neve as their mother. Understandably distressed that their mother abandoned them in the past and is in the process of rejecting them again, the teenagers become disruptive, and unfortunately – because it perpetuates stereotypes – violent. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles My name is Kenny and I love animals Kenny Murray 2018 Kenny Murray writes about being taken into care at the age of 11 and the importance to him of two dogs in a foster home who provided him with unconditional love. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience My Last Confession Helen Fitzgerald 2009 An important character in this novel is 28 year old adoptee, Amanda, whose birth mother is murdered shortly after the 2 women meet for the first time. External Website

Authors F Abandoned Children in Literature: The Orphans in J.K. Rowling’s ➝ Back to Top

Fiction by Care Experienced authors David Copperfield: The Personal History of David Copperfield Charles Dickens et al. 2004 In David Copperfield - the novel Dickens described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew on his own experiences to create one of his most moving and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. It is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a novelist 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

Authors U Biden issues 'long overdue' apology for federal Indigenous boarding schools ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Grace and Frankie 2015–2022 Grace and Frankie is an American comedy television series series (Netflix) stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the eponymous Grace Hanson and Frankie Bergstein, two aging women who for as long as they can recall, have been rivals. Their one-upmanship comes crashing to a halt, however, when they learn that their husbands have fallen in love with each other and want to get married. Nwabudike "Bud" Douglas Bergstein is one of the main characters in Grace and Frankie. He is the adopted son of Frankie and Sol Bergstein and the adopted brother of Coyote Bergstein. He is currently a lawyer at Robert and Sol's firm, Hanson & Bergstein. External Website

Films/Videos Memoirs of a Survivor 1981 Set in the future, D (Julie Christie) is struggling to survive in a failing city. She takes in a teenager, Emily and D watches as Emily falls for Gerald who operates a makeshift camp for the orphan and abandoned children of the city. Doubts about D's mental state occur as she travels back in time and looks in on Victorian family who lived at one time in her apartment. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood Mary McCarthy 2000 Mary McCarthy's parents died, one day apart, in the 1918 influenza pandemic. Blending memories and family myths, Mary McCarthy takes us back to the twenties, when she was orphaned in a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There were her grandmothers: one was a blood-curdling Catholic who combined piousness and pugnacity; the other was Jewish and wore a veil to hide the disastrous effects of a face-lift. There was wicked Uncle Myers who beat her for the good of her soul and Aunt Margaret who laced her orange juice with castor oil and taped her lips at night to prevent unhealthy 'mouth-breathing'. 'Many a time in the course of doing these memoirs,' Mary McCarthy says, 'I have wished that I were writing fiction.' But these were the people, along with the ladies of the Sacred Heart convent school, who helped to inspire her devastating sense of the sublime and ridiculous and her witty, novelist's imagination. External Website

Academic Articles Healthy Depictions? Depicting Adoption and Adoption News Events on Broadcast News Kline, Susan L.; Chatterjee, Karishma; Karel, Amanda I. 2009 Given that the public uses the media to learn about adoption as a family form, this study analyzes U.S. television news coverage of adoption between 2001 and 2005 (N = 309 stories), to identify the types of news events covered about adoption. A majority of news stories covered fraud, crime, legal disputes, and negative international adoption cases. Adoptees as defective or unhealthy were depicted more in negative news event stories, birth parents appeared less overall, and adoptive parents were most likely to have healthy depictions in positively oriented adoption experience, big family, and reunion stories. Although three quarters of the stories used primary adoption participants as news sources, one-third of the negative event stories did not contain healthy depictions of adoption participants. The authors discuss ways journalists and researchers might improve adoption news coverage. External Website