Biography of Care Experienced People Fortunate Son ~ A 20th Century Romance: Based on the Life & Times of Frederick Hunter Wilkinson 1890-1969 David Scott Wilkinson 2025 Frederick Hunter Wilkinson, orphaned in infancy and raised by Barnardo’s in England, was sent to Canada at age nine as one of the British Home Children—a program born during the Industrial Revolution to address poverty through child emigration. Apprenticed as a blacksmith, Fred later served in World War I with the 13th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. After the war, he settled in Uxbridge, Ontario, where he ran a blacksmith shop, married Vera Frances Cook, and raised seven children through decades of social and economic upheaval. Though many Home Children faced hardship and stigma, others like Fred found opportunity and made lasting contributions to Canada’s development; today, they form a vital part of the country’s heritage, with about 10% of Canadians descended from them. External Website

Actors Lesley Sharp Lesley Sharp (born 3 April 1960) is an English stage, film and television actress whose roles on British television include Clocking Off (2000–2001), Bob & Rose (2001) and Afterlife (2005–2006). She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the 1997 film The Full Monty. Sharp was born in Manchester, England, and was adopted at 6 weeks old by a Scottish couple—the Sharps. Born Karen Makinson, she was renamed Lesley Sharp upon her adoption at 6 weeks old. She grew up in Formby, which is north of Liverpool. She has an older sister. Sharp has stated that she started acting because, as a child, she felt "invisible" and did not "quite fit in".[3] She has said that her inspiration to act came from watching Dick Emery on television.[4] Sharp attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the class of 1982. She traced her birth mother over twenty years ago and discovered that she was the result of her mother's affair with a married man. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Dickens Boy Thomas Keneally 2020 Thomas Keneally’s book, The Dickens Boy, is a fictionalised account of Edward Dickens (1852-1902), Charles Dickens’ youngest child. At 16 Edward was sent off by his father to Australia, to “apply himself”. When Edward, or Plorn as he was nicknamed by his father, arrives in Australia he has help from George Rusden, then clerk of the Victorian Parliament—who had earlier helped out Alfred Dickens (1845-1912) on his arrival in Australia—to get a position as a stockman with the Bonney brothers at Momba Station, NSW. Edward then narrates his story of the first 2 years in Australia, riding long distances to see his brother, organising local cricket matches, mustering sheep, learning about Aboriginal culture. Kenneally presents Plorn as a delightful young man; he’s resourceful, principled, and kind. Being so far from his parents, Edward feels orphaned. But he's not and his older brother, Alfred, has been in Australia for a couple of years. There are, however, 2 orphan characters who become friends with Edward: Tom Larkin and Maurice McArden. Tom Larkin’s convict mother died in childbirth and his father, also a convict, died only a few years later. Maurice McArden’s parents are artists who often leave their son with an uncle, Eustace Fremmel, while they’re off on jaunts through Europe. When the artists die, 13 year old Maurice stays on with Eustace, but is sent off to NSW at the age of 15 to live with another uncle, Amos Fremmel. External Website

Films/Videos Simone Biles Rising 2024 Simone Biles Rising (2024) is a documentary released ahead of the Paris Olympic Games. The documentary explores the champion gymnast’s childhood in foster care & subsequent adoption, the overwhelming shame she felt after dropping out of the 2020 Olympics, and her preparation for 2024 Games. Simone Biles has tattooed on her collar bone the line of a poem from Maya, And Still I Rise, because, as she says in the documentary, she has always risen. External Website

Authors R Let’s Not Forget Charles Dickens’s Other Christmas Ghost Stories! ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Codename Villanelle Luke Jennings 2017 Codename Villanelle is a 2017 thriller novel by British author Luke Jennings. Villanelle is a Russian orphan who, after murdering the killers of her gangster father, is rescued from prison and trained as a hitwoman by a shadowy group called The Twelve. Codename Villanelle is the basis of the BBC America television series Killing Eve (2018–2022). External Website

Radio & Podcast The Imprint Weekly Podcast The Imprint Weekly Podcast The Imprint is an independent, nonprofit daily news publication dedicated to covering child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and educational issues faced by vulnerable children and families. External Website

Films/Videos The Power of One 1992 There's an orphan at the centre of The Power of One (1992) who is neither a super villain nor a super hero. Young PK has his mother for a while after his father dies, but she sends him to a boarding school. And then she dies too. Living with his grandfather, the boy is well mentored by a German pianist and a Zulu prison inmate, men who teach him how to stand up for himself because he is bullied by Afrikaan South Africans (he's English). The film concludes with PK joining forces with Black South Africans to campaign against the rampant racial injustice. External Website

Performing Arts German, composer, musician Johann Sebastian Bach Renowned German composer, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), was orphaned at the age of 10. He and his older brother 13 year old Jacob, were sent to live with their older brother Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703)—who became a noted composer—then recently married, expecting a child and employed as an organist in Ohrdruf, 31km south of Thuringia. Sebastian remained living with Christoph and his family until he was 15. It was while living with Christoph that Sebastian developed his keyboard skills. From Christoph’s Sebastian went to Luneburg, 375km north of Ohrdruf. There he attended the Michaelisschule, which offered free tuition to musically talented young people. Instead of going on to university from there he got work as a musician. Over the years Bach had a number of court appointments. He wrote organ music and biblical interpretations for the church, concertos for orchestras, dance music, and compositions for solo performances. While alive, Bach was best known for his performances but he is now “generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.” External Website

Sport Andrew Symonds Andrew Symonds 9 June 1975 – 14 May 2022 Andrew Symonds (9 June 1975 – 14 May 2022), also commonly known by the nickname "Roy", was an Australian international cricketer, who played all three formats as a batting all-rounder. He was an important member of two World Cup winning squads. Symonds played as a right-handed, middle order batsman and alternated between medium pace and off-spin bowling. He was also notable for his exceptional fielding skills. He was born in Birmingham, England, in 1975 before moving to Australia as child. Symonds was adopted by English schoolteachers when he was a baby. Symonds was adopted by parents Ken and Barbara at 3 months and they moved to Australia when he was a toddler. He had three siblings. His sister, Louise Symonds, who was also adopted, was a contestant on the Australian Gladiators television series in 2008. One of Symonds' birth parents was of African-Caribbean background and the other was believed to be of Scandinavian descent. Andrew Symonds and his wife Laura remained close despite living apart before he died; they had two children Billy and Chloe. After he left the game in 2009, Symonds pursued his love of the outdoors in the country's tropical north. His love for cricket was matched by his boyhood passions for pig hunting, fishing and camping trips. He played himself in a Bollywood movie, starred on the Indian version of Big Brother, and commentated for Fox Sports in Australia. Symonds died in a single-vehicle car crash about 50 km (31 mi) outside Townsville, Queensland, on 14 May 2022. External Website

Academic Articles It’s My Journey: It’s My Life! Care leavers and access to social care files Care Leaver Association 2016 It’s My Journey: It’s My Life! Care leavers and access to social care files A report on a series of multi agency roundtable discussions on Data Protection, Subject Access Requests and Support External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Living in Adoption's Emotional Aftermath The New Yorker 2023 A poignant and disturbing article by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker on the difficulties faced by adult adoptees. Deanna, for example, talks about how being adopted means you “first have to lose your entire family”. MacFarquhar writes about the different generations of adoptees in the US, such as those from the “Baby Scoop Era”, unmarried woman compelled to “relinquish” babies between the end of WWII and the passing of Roe v Wade in 1973. The majority of these would have been closed adoptions, whereas the most recent generation have open adoptions. She covers the history of adoptions from Korea, driven initially by Christians and often involving the adoption of children from orphanages who had living parents. MacFarquhar says: “You can divide adoption into three main categories: plausibly invisible…in which a child is adopted by parents of the same race; transracial adoptions; and international adoptions.” Also discussed is the “re-homing adoption adoption market, for children whom parents had adopted but didn’t want anymore, or couldn’t keep.” External Website

Writers Eleanor Roosevelt One time first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), was in kinship care as a child. Eleanor's mother died in 1892 and her father in 1894. Thereafter, Eleanor was in the care of her maternal grandmother who sent Eleanor to a boarding school in England when the girl was 15. Eleanor married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a cousin, in 1905. For 12 years she took care of her husband and 5 children, but after her husband became ill with polio, Eleanor became more active in public life. As first lady from 1933 to 1945, she was influential in improving the lives of women. After her husband died in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt continued in public life. She was appointed to the United Nations by President Truman and she was influential in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prolific writer, writing about civil rights in the 1930s and publishing 28 books from 1932. External Website

Radio & Podcast New Norcia’s nuns and the riddle of reconciliation Veronica Willaway 2021 This is the story of Sister Veronica Willaway, a Yued Noongar woman who grew up at the monastic community of New Norcia in Western Australia. She was in St Joseph's Native School and Orphanage until she became a Benedictine sister herself. External Website

Television Shows Tales of the Unexpected 1982 In this episode of Tales of the Unexpected, Series 5 (1982–1983) 54 (3) Operation Safecrack (9th may 1982) most of the action takes place in a children's home threatened with closure due to lack of funds. Sam 'The Touch' Morrissey is the most famous safe-cracker in Britain and advertising executive Jack Harrison uses him in an elaborate live television stunt to promote his company. Sam has to break into the impregnable new Holdwell 801 safe in the studio, thereby claiming the twenty-five thousand pounds in an envelope in the safe. Time starts to run out and it looks as if Sam has failed. Fortunately for Sam he came to the studio with another skill as well as safe-cracking. External Website

Plays & Musicals featuring Care Exp Sancho: An Act of Rememberance Paterson Joseph 2015 This play, written and performed by Paterson Joseph, was first staged in 2015 in Oxford and Birmingham in England and then at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. In 2018, the play premiered in Lond at Wilton's Music Hall. The play tells something of the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho (c1729-1780) who was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, orphaned at the age of 2, and then 'gifted' to 3 sisters in Greenwich, England. Sancho lived with the sisters for 18 years then year away. He was taken in by John Montagu who educated the young man. Sancho ended up becoming a shopkeeper and involved in the abolitionist movement. He wrote essays, at least one book and 2 plays, and he composed music. External Website

Authors C Careless ➝ Jae-Dee Survives the Home of Many Mothers: ➝ Nights at the Circus ➝ Karobran: the story of an Aboriginal girl ➝ Back to Top

Fiction featuring Care Experience Clarke Holly Throsby 2022 Clarke is the story of 3 mysteries. What happened to Ginny Lawson in 1985 when she suddenly disappeared? Clearly Barney still loves Deb and is still married to her, but why is he living on his own? And why is Leonie the carer of her 4 year old nephew and not Joe's mother? External Website

Authors B Simone Biles ➝ Back to Top

Poetry How do you #definecare? A collaborative poem by care experienced people IMO Latest 2020 We asked care leavers from across the UK how they define care, and what it means to them. This is what they told us. External Website