Radio & Podcast Samantha Morton on Growing Up in the Care Ssytem and Facing Adversity in the Acting World. Louis Theroux Podcast Samantha Morton 2023 Louis meets actor and director Samantha Morton. The pair discuss depicting the British care system in her directorial debut, The Unloved, turning up high on live television, and the enthusiasm of Tom Cruise. External Website

Writers Louise Beech Louise Beech b.1970. Her debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers' pick in 2015 and a top ten bestseller on Amazon. The Mountain in my Shoe features a boy in foster care and was longlisted for the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2016. Following many more books, Daffodils, her memoir, is out now in audiobook, it features foster care, kinship care and time in an orphanage as well as the erratic care from an alcoholic mother. Louise’s memoir is unusual because it is a family memoir, the voices of herself and three siblings are with her the whole way through. They managed to stay together apart from one period when they were separated from their baby brother, who was put into a foster home and their time in an orphanage. The twins and Louise also spent time with their grandmother, but eventually they moved back home and stayed together as a family. Their bond unbreakable, their story full of pathos and humour. Nothing Else, features a professional pianist searching for her sister, who disappeared when their parents died, aided by her childhood-care records and a single song that continues to haunt her. External Website

Authors L Russell Lewis ➝ Back to Top

Authors G Behind The Wall. The Women of the Destitute Asylum Adelaide, 1852-1918 ➝ American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Secret History of Adoption ➝ Back to Top

Television Shows My Parents Are Aliens 2021 My Parents Are Aliens is a British children's television sitcom that was produced for eight series by Yorkshire Television and aired on ITV from 8 November 1999 to 18 December 2006. The series follows the day to day lives of three orphaned children who are adopted by aliens that have trouble adjusting to the local culture. External Website

Films/Videos Gemini Man 2019 Gemini Man is the story of a retiring government assasin, Henry Brogan (Will Smith), being targeted by a much younger clone of himself, 'Junior'. Junior has been raised in an informal foster care or adoption arrangement by the man who organised the cloning, Clayton Varris (Clive Owen). External Website

Non Fiction 14 Years of Hell Bonney Djuric 2008 14 Years of Hell (2008) is an anthology compiled by Australian Bonney Djuric. The stories are all written by women who were at some point as teenage girls incarcerated in the now infamous Hay Girls Institution 1961-1974. Hay (located in the small town of Hay in NSW, 720km west of Sydney) was supposed to be an “experiment to rehabilitate hard-core delinquents.” As is written on back cover, however, the institution was “a place of extreme dehumanising brutality for girls aged between 14-18 years.” External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Heart's Invisible Furies John Boyne (3) 2017 The Heart’s Invisible Furies (2017) by Irish writer John Boyne explores social change in the Republic of Ireland through the life of an adoptee, Cyril Avery. In 1945, Cyril’s mother, Catherine Goggin, is banished from her hometown after she is denounced by the local priest. Catherine moves to Dublin and gives her son up for adoption. Cyril’s adoptive parents, Charles and Maude Avery, leave the boy much to his own devices. Cyril realises early that he is gay but homosexuality is a criminal offence in Ireland and the young man is conflicted, resorting to secret sexual encounters with men but deeply unhappy with this. When he finally moves to Amsterdam in 1973, where homosexuality is legal, Cyril lives openly as a gay man, falls in love, and informally adopts a child with his partner. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles John Brownlow's story John Brownlow 2021 In this blog, you can read the story of John, who was a pupil at the Foundling Hospital, England’s first dedicated children’s charity, in the 19th Century. External Website

Behind the Scenes Barbara Sumner-Burstyn New Zealander Barbara Sumner was 10 days old in 1960 when she was adopted. She and her partner, Tom Burstyn, a cinematographer born in Canada, founded Cloud South Films (NZ) in 2005 and Cloud South North Films (Canada) in 2013. They have won a number of awards for their documentaries. External Website

Writers Edgar Wallace 1875-1932 Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875 – 1932) was an English writer. Edgar Wallace was born Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace in London. His mother, Mary Jane ‘Polly’ Richards was a widow and actor who had a sexual encounter with the lead of a play she was in, Richard Horatio Edgar. Edgar denied all knowledge of the encounter and Polly gave birth to her son in secret. Soon after his birth, baby Richard was given over to a foster family in Billingsgate and raised as Richard Freeman. Richard’s foster father, George Freeman, worked at the Billingsgate Fish Market. Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War, for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London, and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialised short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author. After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool (as one of David Lloyd George's Independent Liberals) in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a script writer for RKO. External Website

Films/Videos Stolen (2011) 2011 Stolen (2011) is a film about the serious global problem of child trafficking. The film, written by Stephen Butchard, focuses on 3 children in the UK who have been trafficked from the Ukraine, Vietnam, and West Africa. They are set to work in making sandwiches, growing cannabis and doing housework. Damien Lewis stars as DI Anthony Carter who works in the Human Trafficking Unit of the police. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Nine Clouds Amanda Gargula 2010 Amanda tells the story of her time in the Moralta Childrens Home, in a cottage home and on her own after she left state care. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman 2017 Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. A mystery surrounds her past and the reader learns that she spent time in care. Everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. External Website

Authors G Sean Geoghegan ➝ Peter Gronlund ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Re-homing': America's shocking trade in unwanted children 2018 A disturbing story about the unregulated practice in the United States of 're-homing' children who have been adopted. Events are held where children get to parade before prospective parents, and some get taken on 'probation'. Events are held where children get to parade before prospective parents, and some get taken on 'probation'. 0 years in prison for their crimes against children. External Website

Films/Videos Ladybird, Ladybird 1994 Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) is a British film directed by Ken Loach. Set in 1987, the film tells the story of Maggie Conlan (Crissy Rock) who has had 6 children removed by Social Sciences and is trying to get the children back. We learn that Maggie was in a violent relationship and escapes into a women’s refuge with 4 children. She locks them in her room when she goes out when night. There’s a fire. One child is badly injured and given to foster parents. Maggie returns to the abusive man and her other 3 children are taken into the care system. Maggie has 2 more children with Jorge (Vladimir Vega) who is a refugee from Central American. Both children are removed by state authorities Yet the authorities allow Maggie and Jorge to keep 3 more children. According to Loach, the film is based on a true story. 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

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles How 10 Orphans From eSwatini Helped Write A Prize-Winning Movie Rachel Cohen 2018 A discussion about the making of a film which includes actual orphans talking about their own experiences in the New Life Homes orphanage in eSwatini. External Website

Authors W British Javelin Thrower ➝ May Wirth ➝ Back to Top