Fiction by Care Experienced authors All Our Shimmering Skies Trent Dalton 2020 Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, orphan Molly Hook is looking to the skies and running for her life. Inside a duffel bag she carries a stone heart, alongside a map to lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who she believes put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. External Website

Artists Robert House Robert House is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. He was sexually abused as a boy while living in an orphanage during the 1960s. In 2021, Robert House curated and commissioned an exhibtion entitled Out of the Darkness: A survivors journey for the Art Gallery of Ballarat. The exhibition speaks to the ongoing impact of child sexual abuse on survivors, and can be interpreted both as a response to trauma and as a protest against injustice. External Website

Authors P Patricia Cornwell ➝ A mother I never knew — the secret of Peter Papathanasiou ➝ The Joy of Dickens ➝ PG Wodehouse ➝ ‎John Lennon - Part 1: Composer of Longing on Apple Podcasts ➝ Edgar Allan Poe (Podcast) ➝ Prince Alamayu ➝ John Lennon - Part 2: Joined to Yoko on Apple Podcasts ➝ The babies of Holnicote House ➝ Back to Top

Children's Fiction Mostly Mary Gwynedd Vulliamy Rae et al. 2017 Mary Plain is an orphan who lives with her relatives at Berne Zoo, Switzerland. A delightful but rather unusual bear, with a huge personality and an appetite to match, you never quite know what escapades she'll get up to next! External Website

Writers Janet Hitchman 1916-1980 Janet Hitchman (1916 – 1980) was a British writer. Elsie May Fields was born to a seamstress, Margaret Ames. There is some evidence that Elsie was given up after her birth because her mother was a widow with 2 children and didn’t want to acknowledge (or her family didn’t want to) that Margaret had an affair with another man. Elsie was first sent to live with a Mrs and Mr Sparkes just out of Norfolk, in England. When it was decided the Sparkes home wasn’t adequate, she went into foster care with another woman, a widow. From there, at age nine, Elsie was mistakenly transferred to a private facility for the care of the mentally unwell, from which she went to another foster home, and then to the Thomas Anguish School of Housecraft (now a Steiner School) before being transferred to a Barnardo’s home, where she changed her name to Janet. Janet married Michael Hitchman and had a child, but was later divorced after which she worked as a domestic servant to support herself. She published her memoir, The King of the Barbareens in 1960 and subsequently wrote for The Observer and other newspapers. She also wrote plays that were produced by the BBC. Such a Strange Lady (1976), Hitchman’s biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, is Janet Hitchman’s most well-known and often cited work. 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

Actors Sylvester Stallone Sylvester Enzio Stallone, born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, July 6, 194, is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. Because of his parents' difficult relationship, he spent considerable time in foster care until he was five and moved in with his father. After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974, he won his first critical acclaim as an actor for his co-starring role as Stanley Rosiello in The Lords of Flatbush. Stallone's Rocky films were box office successes, and he is the only actor in US cinema history to have regularly starred in box office successes over 50 fifty years. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Logan Steiner on Learning Life Lessons from Anne of Green Gables Literary Hub (4) 2023 In this reflection on reading Anne of Green Gables, lawyer-by-day and writer-by-night, American Logan Steiner asks why it is that this Canadian character has resonated for so long and so far. Steiner – who has written a novel about Lucy Maud Montgomery (called After Anne and published by William Morrow) - includes Maud (she preferred Maud to Lucy) in her reflection. She recalls that Maud was raised in kinship care and reading and writing fiction became a source of joy in a dour environment. Life was often difficult for Maud. Even though she didn’t become a writer, it was Anne who “found the happiness in life that often eluded Maud.” External Website

Television Shows Superkids: Breaking Away from Care 2018 Lemn Sissay meets seven young people who are in the care of their council and sets out to help them express their experiences through words and perform them to a packed theatre of decision-makers. External Website

Authors H Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937 ➝ Strong and Tough ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place Sally Bayley 2023 Sally Bayley’s The Green Lady, written in the lyrical, playful style of her memoir Girl with Dove, blends novel and memoir to trace a child’s search for artistic education and identity. Inspired by female teachers, the artist J.M.W. Turner, and her grandmother Edna May Turner, Bayley explores the lives of women who pursued independence and creativity, including suffragist Mary Neal, actress Margaret Rutherford, and poet Stevie Smith. Echoing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the book reimagines biography as a means of creating space for artistic freedom. As a foster child, Bayley reflects on how homes and families can be found through art, literature, and nature. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Voices from the Silent Cradles - Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children Mariela Neagu 2021 Voices from the Silent Cradles - Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children. This book explores the concept of care and the responsibility assumed by ‘states’ when taking children into care. It examines the limitations of the state in exercising its parental duty and it proposes a model for re-conceptualising children’s social care by drawing on the literature on autonomy, recognition theory and specific provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The model places the child’s dignity at the core of the care framework, and it argues that a children’s rights approach which is grounded in moral theories contributes to their self-esteem and au- tonomy, both of which are key for a person’s development and well-being. The model addresses the tension between children’s rights and child welfare and it can be applied to child protection services that aim to take a children’s rights approach. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Extinctions Josephine Wilson 2018 Winner of the prestigious Miles Franklin Award. Extinction is explored through themes of ageing, adoption, aboriginality and extinct species. Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life, he is determined to be miserable, but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen. When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbour, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime's secrets and lies, and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves. Humorous, poignant and galvanising, this is a novel about all kinds of extinction - natural, racial, national and personal - and what we can do to prevent them. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory Kate Douglas 2010 The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, "Contesting Childhood" draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authors - from first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the best-selling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others. Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, "Contesting Childhood" offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere. External Website

Television Shows The Capture 2019 The Capture (2019) is a British conspiracy thriller focusing on what can happen in a “post-truth” society where live video feeds can be edited in real time to create “evidence”. In Series 1, former soldier Shaun Emery (Callum Turner) is released after serving 6 months in prison. His conviction has been over-turned on appeal because of flawed video evidence. However, Emery is quickly re-arrested as CCTV captures him assaulting & kidnapping his barrister, Hannah Roberts (Laura Haddock). Sean Emery was raised in kinship care with his grandfather; his father died when he was 6 & his mother when he was 14. The childhood trauma is used to explain his often-volatile behaviour. However. the CCTV footage *spoiler alert* has been falsified & Emery is not guilty of kidnapping his barrister. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Orphans Real and Imaginary Eileen Simpson 1987 Eileen Simpson (1918–2002) was an American writer and psychotherapist. Simpson’s mother died when she was 1 years old and she and her sister were placed in a Catholic orphanage. Neglected by the nuns, she almost died of tuberculosis and, after their father died when she was 7, she and her sister were sent by relatives to a “preventorium” in New Jersey. Her Orphans, Real and Imaginary. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. It is personal history; it is also social and literary reflection. The first part is about her growing up spending time in a convent-orphanage and a sanatorium due to tuberculosis. The second part of the book is a brief survey of the treatment of orphans; the history, present day -1980s, as well as orphans in autobiography and literary orphans. External Website

Authors R The Stolen Generations. The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969 ➝ The Children of Looked After Children: Outcomes, Experiences and Ensuring Meaningful Support to Young Parents In and Leaving Care ➝ Raising Government Children ➝ Back to Top

Authors O Michael Oher ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Against the Odds. Care Leavers at University Deidre Michell et al. 2014 Against the Odds is an inspiring collection of stories. Each care experienced contiributor faced considerable obstacles - disruptive education, low expectations, family dysfunction, trauma, poverty, stigma - on their way to and through university. Contributors: Reeny Jurczyszyn, Gregory P. Smith, Kimberley Hobbs, Pam Petrilli, Deidre Michell, Rachael Romero, David Jackson, Karen Laura-Lee Wilson, Frank Golding, Stacey Page, Davida Bache, Ryszard Szablicki, Judith Anne Brooker, Amanda Gargula External Website

Children's Fiction The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L Frank Baum 1900 In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy Gale's parents are not mentioned and it's unclear what happened to them. Dorothy is an orphan who lives with Aunt Em & Uncle Henry on a farm in Kansas but it's unclear if they are blood relatives (kinship care) or a foster family. After a cyclone she and her dog, Toto, are propelled into the magical Land of Oz. Dorothy is told by the Good Witch of the North that the way home is via the yellow brick road to the Emerald City where she can ask the Wizard of Oz for help. External Website