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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

Authors W The language we use about children in care ➝ Who does Australia lock up? ➝ The indestructible nature of Corey White ➝ Jeanette Winterson: the storyteller's tale ➝ Madam CJ Walker ➝ Wards of the State ➝ New Norcia’s nuns and the riddle of reconciliation ➝ Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit ➝ Robi Walters (podcast) ➝ ‎The Penguin Podcast: Alex Wheatle with Nihal Arthanayake ➝ Mary Wilson — Dream Girl ➝ Back to Top

Authors M Fremantle: Reflections of a child migrant ➝ Two Mothers - Twice the blessing or was I cursed? ➝ What Makes a Family? The Radical Portrayal of Diverse Families in Australian Picture Books ➝ Blood Doesn't Define Evotypical Families: Eleanor Spence's Stories of Informal and Formal Foster Care in Australia ➝ Exploring the legal representation of individuals in foster care: What say youth and alumni? ➝ Surviving the "House of a Hundred Windows": Irish Industrial Schools in Recent Fiction and Memoirs ➝ From Hagiography to Personal Pain: Stories of Australian foster care from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century ➝ Out of sight: the censoring of family diversity in picture books ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Dangerous Freedom Lawrence Scott 2021 Dangerous Freedom (2021) is a historical novel by Trinidad born writer Lawrence Scott about Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804). Dido Elizabeth Belle was born into slavery. Her father, Captain John Lindsay of the British Royal Navy, took Dido with him when he returned to England in 1765 and left her to be raised by his uncle Willam and aunt Elizabeth. The Earl and Countess of Mansfield lived at Kenwood House in Hampstead. They were already raising another great-niece, Lady Eliabeth Murray. Dido Elizabeth Belle lived at Kenwood House for 31 years. External Website

Writers Chris Wild Chis Wild is a writer and activist in the UK state care sector. He is the author of 2 books, both of which detail significant failings in the care system, both from his experience as a child in the system and as advocate for improving the system. External Website

Films/Videos Three Identical Strangers 2018 Edward Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran were born a set of identical triplets but then adopted by 3 different families. This documentary explores their lives and the social experiement they were a part of. External Website

Academic Articles The American West and the Archetypel Orpan Louie Attebery ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase Two Report Zoe Baker ➝ Revealing the Profile of Foster Parents, Biological Parents, Foster Children and the Triadic Relationship amongst them Vasiliki Baltsioti & Ignatia Farmakopoulou ➝ Social Workers’ Involvement in Policy Practice in Portugal Francisco Branco ➝ The Perceived Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Care-Experienced People Rosie Canning et al ➝ Popular perceptions of disrupted childhoods Kirsty Capes ➝ Rewriting the Past: Gerard Mannix Flynn's Nothing to Say and James X Victoria Connor ➝ No More Standing In The Shadows – Treating The Wounds Of Historic Forced Adoption Jeannot Farmer ➝ Living with the past: the creation of the stolen generation positionality Stephanie Gilbert ➝ A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults Jim Goddard ➝ As a former foster kid, I'm giving Tracy Beaker a second chance Sophia Alexandra Hall ➝ Louis Armstrong’s “Karnofsky Document”: The Reaffirmation of Social Death and the Afterlife of Emotional Labor Dalton Jones ➝ Contemplating Fictional and Nonfictional Orphan Stories (2004) Dennis Leoutsakas ➝ Two Mothers - Twice the blessing or was I cursed? Deidre Michell ➝ Exploring the legal representation of individuals in foster care: What say youth and alumni? J Jay Miller et al. ➝ Surviving the "House of a Hundred Windows": Irish Industrial Schools in Recent Fiction and Memoirs Michael Molino ➝ Otherways' into the Garden: Re-Visioning the Feminine in The Secret Garden Linda Parsons ➝ Children out of place' : representations of foster care in the Australian news media Damien King Riggs ➝ The Role of Orphan Films in the 21st Century Archive Dan Streible ➝ Oliver Twisted: the origins of Lord Voldemort in the Dickensian orphan. James Washick ➝ Incarnations of the Orphan Nina Auerbach ➝ From Us to Us: A collection of advice from care-experienced graduates to care-experienced graduates Zoe Baker ➝ Review: Making Home: Orphanhood, kinship, and cultural memory in contemporary American novels. Wade Bell ➝ It’s My Journey: It’s My Life! Care leavers and access to social care files Care Leaver Association ➝ Care leavers in the ivory tower Kirsty Capes ➝ Interrogating ‘poor outcomes’ and disrupted care in children’s fiction Kirsty Capes ➝ ‘Is this a joke?’ Exploring how care experienced people feel their way through inheritance and what their emotions ‘do’, Delyth Edwards & Rosie Canning ➝ Reconsidering the care-crime connection in a climate of crisis Claire Fitzpatrick ➝ More Than Our Childhoods: A survivor-led participatory approach to out-of-home care life story research Amy Gill & Dee Michell ➝ Fostered Voices: Narratives of US Foster Care Nikky Greer ➝ A perspective from the periphery: Re-imagining regional North Queensland women's stories using historical fiction Louise Henry ➝ From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children’s Literature Melanie A. Kimball ➝ Conceptualizing Stigma Bruce G Link et al. ➝ From Hagiography to Personal Pain: Stories of Australian foster care from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century Dee Michell ➝ Out of sight: the censoring of family diversity in picture books Sarah Mokrycki ➝ Children Without Childhood: The Emotionality of Orphaned Children and Images of Their Rescuers in Selected Works of English and Canadian Literature Irena Avsenik Nabergoj ➝ The Mem Sahib, the Worthy, the Rajah and His Minions: Some Reflections on the Class Politics of The Secret Garden Jerry Phillips ➝ "Let's Go to the Movies": Filmic Representations of Gay Foster and Adoptive Parents Damien Riggs ➝ ‘Yes I’ve got some historic convictions but do the public really need protecting from me?’ The Record ➝ Lost Boys and Recovered Classics: Literary and Social Memory in Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (1995) Christopher Wilson ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase Three Report Zoe Baker ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase one report Zoe Baker ➝ "One of Us": Orphaned Selves and Legitimacy in Australian Autobiography Jack Bowers ➝ 45 Care Leaver Friendly Ways Care Leavers Association ➝ (Pseudo)motherhood, care constructs and the geography of the nuclear family: class, gender and the suburbs in contemporary fiction Kirsty Capes ➝ Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America Daniel Cohen ➝ Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories Craig Evans ➝ Foster Focus Mag Foster Focus Mag ➝ Reflexivity and Lived Experience of Out-of-Home Care: Positionality as an Early Parenthood Researcher Amy Gill ➝ What "The Mandalorian" Teaches Us About Foster Care Sophia Alexandra Hall ➝ The Adultification of Black Girls in State Care: Perspectives Sylvia Ikomi ➝ Healthy Depictions? Depicting Adoption and Adoption News Events on Broadcast News Kline, Susan L.; Chatterjee, Karishma; Karel, Amanda I. ➝ Fremantle: Reflections of a child migrant Michael McCarthy ➝ Blood Doesn't Define Evotypical Families: Eleanor Spence's Stories of Informal and Formal Foster Care in Australia Dee Michell ➝ What Makes a Family? The Radical Portrayal of Diverse Families in Australian Picture Books Sarah Mokrzycki ➝ The politics of good intentions and what I’ve learned from Romania’s ‘orphans’ Mariela Neagu ➝ A Fragment of the Maltese Exodus: Child Migration to Australia 1953-1965 David Plowman ➝ Christian Science Versus the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden Anne Stiles ➝ Integrating personal and professional experiences: Seven phases to integrating loss and grief. Rosemary Wanganeen ➝ A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care Yujie Zhao, Jacinta Waugh & Philip Mendes ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows Ragnarok 2020 Ragnarok is a Norwegian drama series that reimagines Norse mythology in the present day. A teenage boy, Magne, is surprised to learn he is the reincarnation of the God, Thor, and he takes up the fight against those destroying the planet. The character Iman Reza, an adoptee with Sri Lankan heritage, is the reincarnation of the goddess Freyja. External Website

Television Shows Suits 2011 The American legal drama, Suits (2011-2019), features a Care Experienced character. Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) was 11 when his parents died in a car crash and he goes to live with his paternal grandmother, Edith Ross (Rebecca Schull). When the series opens, Mike is making a living and paying for his grandmother's care by taking the Law School Admission Test for others. Prepared to deliver a suitcase of dope for a friend in order to get the $25k he needs to upgrade his grandmother's care, he stumbles into an interview with Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), a successful lawer with Pearson Hardman. In the Season 7 final episode, Mike Ross marries Rachel Zane (Meghan Markles). Patrick J Adams and Meghan Markles also leave the show, Meghan because she is marrying Harry, and Patrick because he wanted to spend more time with his wife, Australian born Troian Bellisario. External Website

Sport Dele Alli Dele Alli b.1996 Bamidele Jermaine "Dele" Alli (b. 1996) is an English professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Premier League club Everton and the England national team. Alli was born in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, to a Yoruba Nigerian father Kehinde and English mother Denise. Kehinde moved to the United States a week after Alli's birth. Alli was initially brought up by his mother, who suffered from alcohol problems. At the age of nine, he moved to Nigeria with his father, where he spent two years in an international school before returning to Milton Keynes to live with his mother. Alli went to Stantonbury Campus and The Radcliffe School in Wolverton. At the age of 13, he moved into the family home of Alan and Sally Hickford, parents of another young footballer with MK Dons and whom he refers to as his "adoptive parents" although he was never legally adopted by them. In the summer of 2016, Alli elected to stop wearing his surname on his match shirts because he felt no connection with the Alli family name, instead opting for "Dele". External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Golden Age Joan London 2014 The Golden Age (2014) is a novel by Australian writer Joan London. Most of the story revolves around a children’s polio convalescent home called The Golden Age and which operated in Leederville, Western Australia from 1949 until 1959. 13-year-old Frank Gold is a refugee from Hungary. Unable to walk because of polio, he becomes passionate about poetry on meeting another patient, Sullivan. He’d already been separated from his parents during WWII when his mother left him for his safety with her friend Julia and another woman, Hedwiga Frank becomes friends with Elsa Briggs, who is about 6 months younger than Frank and born in Australia. She doesn’t understand Frank’s stories of hiding in an attic during WWII, of how “… ordinary people, neighbours, could kill each other” (188). Joan London gently explores the difficulties for children being separated from their families while convalescing, of how the experience changed them and their relationships with parents & siblings. External Website

Television Shows Ordeal by Innocence 2018 This is a 3 part drama based on Agatha Christie's novel of the same name. After wealthy Rachel Argyll is found dead, one of her five adopted children, Jack, is arrested for the crime but is killed in jail before he can stand trail. 18 months later a stranger arrives to offer an alibi for Jack. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words is the story of Esme Nicoll who lives with her single dad, Harry, in Oxford. Harry is a lexicographer working on the Oxford Dictionary (begun in 1879, not finished until 1928). Esme hangs out in the Scriptorium where Harry works; she collects and hides words she finds offensive and as she grows up, she collects words used by women that others find offensive. There is an important orphan character who features throughout The Dictionary of Lost Words. Lizzy Lester has been a domestic servant since she was 11 when her mother died and her many siblings disappeared. She's 8 years older than Esme and often looks after her for Harry. Eventually, the women become friends. There's a story of adoption too. External Website

Actors Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin to businessman and inventor, Richard (Dick) Welles, and pianist, Beatrice Ives Welles. When he was six, Orson’s parents separated. Three years later, his mother died of hepatitis. At age 11, Orson was sent to boarding school and after his father died, the principal of the school became 15 year old Orson's guardian. Orson Welles is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. While in his twenties Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway. In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic because many listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring. His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which is consistently ranked as the greatest film ever made, and which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. In 2002 Orson Welles was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and in 2018 he was included in the list of the 50 greatest Hollywood actors of all time by The Daily Telegraph. External Website