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Children's Fiction What Mummies Are Made Of by Stephanie Hutton Storgy Kids 2018 STORGY Kids is an online magazine for children and young people. They publish the best short stories we can find for 8 to 12-year-old readers, whilst also providing a space for Young Adult fiction too, as well as book reviews and interviews with authors. Stephanie Hutton's short story explores 'What Mummies Are Made Of' by some children in care. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Rememberings Sinead O'Connor 2021 Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor published her memoir, Rememberings, in 2021. The book covers her difficult childhood with a mother who was a habitual thief and violent in the way she treated Sinead. One of the worst stories is when Marie O’Connor had Sinead sit in the front passenger seat of the car and then deliberately rammed the car into another one. When Sinead was fourteen, she was caught stealing a pair of gold shoes for a friend to wear to a concert. She was then sent to the An Grianán Training Centre, once a notorious Magdalene laundry. She later wrote that the experience overall was a positive one. External Website

Activists Accessing Social Services Child Care Files: The Life and Importance of Graham Gaskin (1959 – 2002) Graham Gaskin 1959-2002 It is not widely known, amongst people who grew up in care before 1989, that we owe our rights to access our child care files to a fellow care leaver. With legal help, Graham took the council to court for negligence and sought access to his file as part of this process. He lost his initial case but kept trying. Eventually, the legal case ended up in the European Court of Human Rights in 1989. This time, he won. External Website

Radio & Podcast Adoption and moral obligation The Philosopher's Zone 2022 An interesting conversation on adoption as a 'moral duty' giving the number of children in the world (an estimated 16.2) who are orphans. Why the ongoing 'genetic preference' in families when so many other children need a home, is the question being explored. External Website

Films/Videos Fugitive Pieces 2007 Fugitive Pieces is based on the 1996 award winning novel by Canadian writer, Anne Michaels (b. 1958). The film tells the story of Jakob who is 7 when he is orphaned in Poland during WWII. He hides in the forests and is rescued by a Greek archeologist who spirits him away to Greece and safety. Fugitive Pieces was produced by Robert Lantos and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. It premiered as the opening film for the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Goodbye, Mummy Darling Susan Tickner 2003 This is the story of Susan's journey from foster care in England to being shipped out to Australia when she was nine. External Website

Non Fiction We Don't Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 Fintan O'Toole 2021 Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves. A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 (2021) includes references to: a. The industrial schools system (established in 1868 to care for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children”) and the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland (established 2000). The Commission resulted in what’s known as Ryan Report (2009) and which concluded that many children had been subject to physical, sexual and emotional violence. Perpetrators were protected to preserve the reputation of the institutions. b. Magdalen Laundries: institutions in which pregnant girls and women were incarcerated, often for the rest of their lives. Many of the children born in the laundries were transferred to the industrial schools. c. Mother-and-baby homes, from which many children were sold to American families in a lucrative adoption business endorsed by the state. O’Toole also tells the story of the Dunne family, one of whom in 1961 tried to expose the brutality going in the industrial schools but who couldn’t get his book published. External Website

Authors H Hackney Child ➝ The Convent ➝ The Kiss ➝ You Don't Look Adopted ➝ The Looked After Kid ➝ The King Of The Barbareens ➝ Me, My Bike and a Street Dog Called Lucy ➝ The Girl in the Purple Dress: My Adoption Story ➝ Daughters of Nazareth ➝ Extraordinary Journey: The Lifelong Path of the Transracial Adoptee ➝ Call Me Auntie: My Childhood in Care and My Search for My Mother ➝ On Sunset ➝ Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class ➝ Flo: child migrant from Liverpool ➝ Part of My Story ➝ The Likes of Us ➝ Lowborn ➝ The Sons with Two Moms ➝ The Hospital By the River: A Story of Hope ➝ The Mother Knot ➝ Seeking Raputre ➝ But We All Shine On The Remarkable Orphans of Burbank Children’s Home by Paolo Hewitt ➝ The Forgotten Children: Fairbridge Farm School and its Betrayal of Britain's Child Migrants to Australia ➝ Walk On: The Remarkable True Story of the Last Person Sentenced to Death in Australia ➝ The Mistress's Daughter ➝ I'll Love You If... ➝ Back to Top

Children's Fiction Otto Tattercoat and the Forest of Lost Things Matilda Woods 2020 These are the rules that guide Nim’s life as she and her rat, Nibbles, live on the streets and the rooftops of the only place she’s ever called home. So when a new boy named Otto comes to town and gets caught up in the devious plottings of a former Tattercoat who’s fallen from grace, Nim takes it upon herself to come to Otto’s rescue. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Peter Mullan’s Orphans find a new ‘home’ Kenny Smith 2019 The film, written and directed by Mullan, told the story of the four Flynn siblings – three brothers and a sister – who after the death of their mother are torn apart during a long dark night, on the eve of her funeral, of mishaps and understandings. Such was the cult of the movie that it even spawned its own catchphrase – ‘She ain’t heavy she’s ma mother.’ External Website

Performing Arts Radio Presenter Pandora Christie Pandora Christie b.1982, grew up in South London, living in a series of foster homes after the death of her mother when she was 9 years old. Pandora is one of UK Radio’s most recognised radio presenters. Her mum was a severe alcoholic and sometimes she just couldn't cope with Pandora and her sister. Consequently, she was in and out of foster homes, homeless often sleeping on benches and getting picked up by the police. After her mother died, Pandora went into full time foster care. Her foster parents made her welcome and supported her career choice, to follow her dream. After a decade working in radio, Pandora has presented on some of the biggest stations in the UK including Capital and KISS, and is now presenting Heart’s mid-morning show. External Website

Radio & Podcast The Bed Under the Stairs Lemn Sissay 2016 Lemn Sissay talking about his experience in foster care and comparing his life to that of fictional character Harry Potter. External Website

Actors Alain Delon When Alain Delon (1935-2024) was 4 years of age, his parents divorced and abandoned him into foster care. Later, his parents shared custody of the boy who was put into multiple boarding schools (as he was regularly expelled). Alain Delon enlisted in the French army at the age of 17 (some sources say he did so voluntarily, some say his parents forced him to). In 1956 and back in Paris, the good looking Alain was 'discovered' by actor Brigitte Auber and through Auber, Alain met filmmakers and photographers. After his first film role he quickly became a success, a French star of the 1960s and 1970s. External Website

Television Shows Anne with an E 2017 Historical drama series based on the 1908 book by Lucy Maud Montgomery. External Website

Television Shows The Boys 2019 The Boys (2019) is an American superhero series based on a book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. A satire, The Boys are a team of vigilantes going after individuals who have superpowers but who abuse those powers. In Series 1, Episode 2, an origin story for Victoria Neuman appears. Neuman is a US congresswoman and alumnus of the Red River Institute. The Red River Institute is a ‘home’ for children who have developed “undesired superpowers” and who are then discarded by their parents. See https://the-boys.fandom.com/wiki/Red_River_Institute for a detailed list of ‘inhabitants’ of the Red River Institute. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Seven Sisters Alex Wheatle 2003 Inspired by personal experience, the Seven Sisters explores the lives of children in care. Glenroy, Bullett, Curvis and Carlton – the best of friends, as tight as blood brothers. They all live in Pinewood Oaks, a home for orphans and children in care, besides the great forest named after the legend of the Seven Sisters. At the home they are looked after by ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunts’, go to the local school and try to live like normal children. But, of course, they’re not. The four friends decide to run away from the horror of their everyday lives in a children's home in the English countryside. They head for the woods, their sense of freedom surprises them, and for the first time they feel the exhilaration of adolescence. Yet the forest slowly asserts its own power and what happens there will affect the four boys' lives forever. External Website

Television Shows The Secrets She Keeps 2020 The Secrets She Keeps is an Australian thriller, the first series of which is based on the epynomous 2017 novel by Michael Robotham. In Series 1, there is a forced adoption story. 16 year old Agatha was raped by a church elder and not allowed to keep the resultant baby. Years later, Agatha is plotting and planning to steal a baby. In Series 2, Agatha is facing trial for stealing a baby and it's the daughter she was forced to give up who comes out in support of Agatha, arguing the older woman should be treated sympathetically because of the early trauma. External Website

Poets Dorothy Wordsworth (poet) Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (1771 – 1855) was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was separated from her family after her mother died. Dorothy was sent to boarding school just out of Halifax at the age of nine. She was only there for three years. Her father died intestate with only a small personal estate at the end of 1783 and to save money, the children’s guardians—paternal uncle Richard Wordsworth and maternal uncle Christopher Cookson—withdrew Dorothy from the school. Dorothy’s uncle William Cookson took the girl under his wing while home from Cambridge and continued with her education. Dorothy lived happily with her uncle and his wife for 6 years. She helped in the household and with the children, but also began imagining how she would set up house with her brothers, especially William. It wasn’t until 1795, by which time Dorothy was in her early 20s, before she and William began living together, first at Racedown Lodge in Dorset and later in Dove Cottage at Grasmere in the Lake District from 1799 to 1808. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Stolen Generations. The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969 Peter Read 1981 In 1981, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs published a ground-breaking paper on the Stolen Generations. The paper, written by Peter Read, was among the first attempts to document the devastatioin of forcibly removing Aboriginal children in Australia from their parents. This reprint of that paper was published to help educate all Australians about this history and the intergenerational legacy of the Stolen Generations. Documents the disruption of families when children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to state or church-run institutions, boarding homes, residential schools, and adoption programs. The author concludes that it is a story of attempted genocide. External Website

Authors B Orphans in fiction ➝ Orphans | film by Pakula [1987] ➝ “America’s Literary Giant.” On the Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam ➝ John’s story – one of the first foundlings ➝ 7 Novels about Orphans ➝ Lilian Bader: The First Black Woman to join the RAF ➝ Floella Benjamin (blog) ➝ The Artist’s Book: Mothers’ Experiences of Adoption ➝ Mary's story ➝ Bridgeman Blog ➝ Care leavers deserve to be seen for their talents ➝ Success Stories and Sad Statistics? ➝ Eleanor and George’s story – love at the Foundling Hospital ➝ Trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Determinism and Stigma... ➝ Back to Top