Films/Videos Dustbin Baby 2008 Dustbin Baby is a BBC television film directed by Juliet May, based on Jacqueline Wilson's 2001 novel of the same name. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 21 December 2008. The film stars Dakota Blue Richards as April, a troubled teenager who was abandoned in a dustbin as an infant, and Juliet Stevenson as Marion Bean, April's adoptive mother. David Haig stars as Elliot, Marion's friend and colleague. The screenplay was written by Helen Blakeman, and the film was produced by Kindle Entertainment. Dustbin Baby deals with themes including maternal bonding, bullying, and youth crime. The story revolves around April running away on her fourteenth birthday, while Marion searches for her. April's life is recounted in flashbacks as she meets people and visits places that are significant to her. External Website

Films/Videos Cousins 2021 The story of Aboriginal Australian children stolen from their parents - the Stolen Generation(s) - is well known. Less well known (outside of New Zealand) is that Maori children were stolen from their families too - the theme of this 2021 film, Cousins. The film is an adaptation from the 1992 novel of the same name by Patricia Grace, a foremost NZ literary figure. It tells the story of 3 cousins - 1 of whom was taken and raised in an orphanage and in foster care - who travel different paths as adults. Cousins was produced by an all female Maori team and features 9 Maori female actors playing the 3 cousins across 3 stages of their lives. External Website

Television Shows My Mum Tracy Beaker 2021 My Mum Tracy Beaker is a British children's television miniseries that premiered on CBBC and BBC iPlayer on 12 February 2021. The series follows on from the events of its predecessors, The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy Beaker Returns and The Dumping Ground. My Mum Tracy Beaker saw Dani Harmer reprise her role as Tracy Beaker, and also included original cast members Lisa Coleman, Ruth Gemmell and Montanna Thompson, as well as new cast members Emma Davies and Jordan Duvigneau. External Website

Television Shows The Institute 2025 The Institute (2025) is an American horror series based on the eponymous novel by Stephen King. Ms Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker) runs a secretive place called The Institute where children are experimented on before disappearing, ostensibly going back home. Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) is a 14-year-old who is abducted from his home and wakes up in The Institute. Told he has special abilities (& he is clever), Luke finds out that his parents were murdered on the night he was kidnapped and about why children are being held there and where they disappear to. While Luke is working out what’s going on inside The Institute, Tim (Ben Barnes) is a cop who has wandered into town & taken on a job he is over-qualified for, that of Night Knocker. The Night Knocker prowls the local streets at night making sure all is well. The Institute has been running for about 70 years & there are stories over the years of children mysteriously disappearing, stories that Tim finds out about. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Jack Maggs Peter Carey 1997 Jack Maggs (1997) is a novel by Australia writer Peter Carey. Set in 19th century London, Jack Maggs is a retelling of Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens with Jack Maggs as a central character (instead of Abel Magwitch). Jack Maggs was a foundling who was given in to foster care and trained to be a thief. After being betrayed, he is transported to the penal colony of New South Wales, where he does well and provides for his son in London, Henry Phipps (instead of Pip). In 1837, Jack Maggs returns to London to find his son and becomes involved with the mesmerist and writer, Tobias Oates (loosely based on Charles Dickens). Says Hermion Lee in her 29 September 1997 review in The Guardian: “But this is Victorian England with a difference. Things that were suppressed or unspoken in Dickens homosexuality, illicit sexual passion, flogging of prisoners, the rape of child-prostitutes, the abortion trade are unsentimentally exposed in this rewriting, as are Dickens's colonial assumptions. Carey upends Dickens's story of the convict who makes a gentleman out of the orphan boy who once helped him…” External Website

Films/Videos James and the Giant Peach 1996 James and the Giant Peach is a movie starring Paul Terry, Joanna Lumley, and Pete Postlethwaite. An orphan who lives with his two cruel aunts befriends anthropomorphic bugs who live inside a giant peach, and they embark on a journey... External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Bath Times & Nursery Rhymes Pam Weaver 2013 In 1961, sixteen year-old Pam Weaver –who was adopted at birth—began training as a nursery nurse. She worked in children’s homes and as a private nanny for 30 years. before changing direction and becoming a writer Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes is Pam’s memoir about her time in state nurseries and as a Hyde Park private nanny. External Website

Films/Videos An Angel for May 2002 Young Tom, who is unhappy at home because of his parents' separation, travels fifty years to the past after discovering a time machine. He meets May, a little orphan who has been traumatised. Now that he knows his friends' fate and his own, he will try to reorder the events and change their history. External Website

Films/Videos Orphan Train 1979 Orphan Train (1979) is an American film based on the real-life orphan train movement which – from the middle of the 19th century - took children from the eastern coast cities of the USA to cities in the Midwest for foster care & adoption. Orphan Train stars Emma Symms as a young woman accompanying the 1st group of children. Kevin Dobson play Frank Carlin, a reporter who is recording the journey. The Orphan Train program operated between 1854 and 1929 and relocated approximately 200,000 children. Although the program purported to find homes for orphaned children, many of the children were from impoverished and immigrant families. Critics of the program were concerned about the exploitation of the children as farm labour; the lack of initial screening of foster families; and the lack of follow up about the well-being of the children. External Website

Activists Peregrina Sails Elana Connor 2017 Elana Connor has been solo sailing since 2017 to increase global awareness of foster care. Her goal is to remind the world that children & young people in foster & other forms of state care are “capable of unlimited achievements”. You can read more about Elana’s intentions & adventures here on her website. She even has a recipe for making a potato salad while at sea! And what to do when there’s a pandemic and borders close! External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Wide, Wide World Susan Warner 1850 Often thought of as America's first bestselling book, The Wide, Wide World (1850) by Susan Warner features a child in kinship care. Ellen Montgomery is taken to Europe to live with an aunt because her mother is ill. The aunt, Fortune Emerson, is unkind. After a time Ellen is invited to stay with relatives in Scotland where she is treated more benevolently, but the relatives become possessive, wanting Ellen to renounce her American heritage and her religion. Ellen returns to American after she marries John Humphreys, the brother of a friend she met when living with Fortune Emerson. External Website

Television Shows The Mysterious Benedict Society 2021 The Mysterious Benedict Society (2021-2023) is an American tv series based on the children’s books Trenton Lee Stewart. Tony Hale plays Nicholas Benedict and his long-lost twin broth, LD Curtain/Nathaniel Benedict. “A Bunch of Smart Orphans” is the title of the 1st episode. The 4 children protagonists are introduced and “The Emergency” discussed. The Emergency requires the children to infiltrate the Institute run by Curtain who is brainwashing people. External Website

Actors Gary Coleman Gary Coleman (1968-2010), child star of Diff’rent Strokes (1978-1985), was adopted as a baby. Gary Wayne Coleman was born in Zion, Illinois and adopted as a baby by Edmonia Coleman, a nurse, and W.G. Coleman, a salesman for a pharmaceutical company. Coleman was diagnosed at birth with several conditions including nephritis, a kidney disorder. His adult height was impacted by the treatment for nephritis – he was only 1.4 metres (4’ 8”) tall. Coleman 1st appeared in a tv commercial for a Chicago bank. As a result of that commercial, he was cast in the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes as 1 of 2 African American brothers adopted by a rich white man after their mother dies. After Diff’rent Strokes was cancelled, Coleman appeared occasionally in television series or in movies, often as a minor character, sometimes as himself. Gary Coleman died from a head injury in 2010 at the age of 42. External Website

Television Shows Long Bright River 2025 Long Bright River (2025) is a police procedural based on the eponymous novel by Liz Moore. Mickey (Amanda Seyfried) is a Philadelphia police patrol officer working in a high-crime area. When 3 women are found dead, and her ‘superiors’ decide these are suicides rather than homicides, Mickey begins to investigate the deaths. We find out during the series that Mickey and her younger sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) were raised in the kinship care of their grandfather (John Doman). We also find out **spoiler alert** late in the series that Kacey’s now 8-year-old son was removed from her by the state when he was a baby. Mickey has been raising Thomas (Callum Vinson) as if he is her own child. External Website

Radio & Podcast Charles Dickens - Great Expectations History Extra 2025 In this History Extra podcast, Charles Dickens’ scholar, Peter Oxford, talks about the famous writer. The focus for the conversation are the things about Dickens that might not be well known. For example, the shame that Dickens experienced because of being taken out of school to work in a blacking factory as a young boy. There’s also a conversation about Dickens’ marriage to Catherine Hogarth and the breaking up some years later. Dickens begins to write about what a bad mother Catherine was, how the two of them never got along. According to Peter Oxford, this wasn’t true. But the 2 grow apart. Charles meets the Ternan family, and the relationship with Ellen develops. Even though Dickens was trying to protect his ‘brand’ by badmouthing Catherine, says Oxford, that’s the bit we now have trouble with. External Website

Television Shows The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 1997 A dramatisation of the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1997) recounts the adventures of foundling, Tom Jones, as he is taken in by the kind Squire Allworthy and then banished from the Allworthy estate and has a number of adventures, eventually ending up in London. External Website

Television Shows The Alienist 2018 The Alienist (2018-2020) is an adaptation of Caleb Carr’s historical thriller novels which include the character of Laszlo Kreizler who runs a home for orphaned/abandoned children in 19th century New York City and Stevie Taggart, a boy Kreizler has taken into his care. In the 1st season, the 10 episodes tell the story of 1994 novel The Alienist, which is set in 1896 and investigates the deaths of teenage boys. In the 2nd season, the 8 episodes tell the story of an investigation into the deaths of babies & children by serial killer Elspeth Hunter. Daniel Bruhl stars as Laszlo Kreizler, Luke Evans as John Morr and Dakota Fanna as Sara Howard. Matt Lintz plays Stevie Taggert in Season 1, and Dominic Herman-Day in Season 2. External Website

Radio & Podcast Barry Keoghan Louis Theroux Podcast 2024 Irish actor Barry Keoghan (b. 1992) was in foster & kinship care as a child. In this episode (S3 Ep7) of the Louis Theroux Podcast, Keoghan talks about his childhood – the reasons for being in foster care, visits with his mother, living with his grandmother after his mother died. Keoghan stresses that he speaks about his background not for sympathy or pity, but as encouragement for children from similarly difficult backgrounds. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Gaining a Sense of Self Karen Laura-Lee Wilson 2010 Karen Laura-Lee Wilson’s memoir is a detailed and of her first twenty-five years growing up in a sole-parent family with a narcissistic mother. Embedded in her story are universal themes of abandonment, love, hate, determination, optimism and endurance. Mostly set in Brisbane, Australia during the 1950s and 1960s, her journey is a search for identity. Eventually Karen finds her own path through education, positive and negative sexual relationships and travel. External Website

Films/Videos The Red Shoes (film) 1948 The Red Shoes (1948) is a British dance drama film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 fairytale. It follows aspiring ballerina Victoria Page, who joins the prestigious Ballet Lermontov under the demanding impresario Boris Lermontov. Cast as the lead in a ballet adapted from Andersen’s story, Victoria must navigate the relentless demands of art, her ambition, and her love for composer Julian Craster. As her career soars, she faces impossible choices between love and professional success. Ultimately, caught between loyalty to her art and her heart, Victoria tragically mirrors the fate of the Andersen heroine, her life and death inseparable from the symbolic power of the red shoes. External Website