Search Results

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles The PhD question… Rosie Canning 2021 Back in November 2020, we held The Challenges and Pleasure of Being a Care Experienced Person Working and Studying in a University. Rosie Canning spoke about doing a PhD: When did you first consider… External Website

Television Shows Breaking the Silence: Britain's Adoption Scandal ​ 2016 On 9 November 2016 Breaking the Silence: Britain's Adoption Scandal was broadcast in Britain. The documentary tells the story of 7 women who had their babies stolen from them because they were unmarried. Medical professionals, 'moral welfare workers' and some parents insisted the women could not raise a child on their own. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the catholic church in England and Wales, apologises at the end of the documentary for the "grief and pain" caused by the practice of forced adoptions. There were also messages of 'regret' from the salvation army and the church of england. The documentary can be watched on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51L8-3QENA External Website

Writers Leigh Bardugo ​ ​ Leigh Bardugo is a writer of Young Adult fiction. She grew up in Los Angeles, California with her grandparents, an isolation which informed her description of the orphanage in Shadow and Bone, the first book in her Grisha trilogy. Bardugo worked as a copyrighter and journalist before writing Shadow and Bone. External Website

Behind the Scenes Barry Jenkins ​ ​ Barry Jenkins (born November 19, 1979) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was born in 1979 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, the youngest of four siblings, each from a different father. His father separated from his mother while she was pregnant with Jenkins, believing that he was not Jenkins's father; he died when Jenkins was 12. Jenkins grew up in Liberty City and was primarily raised by another older woman (who had also looked after his mother while she was a teenager) in an overcrowded apartment. He attended Miami Northwestern Senior High School, where he played football and ran track. He made his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine. Following an eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking, Jenkins directed and co-wrote the LGBT-themed independent drama Moonlight (2016), which won numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. He became the fourth black person to be nominated for Best Director and the second black person to direct a Best Picture winner. He released his third directorial feature If Beale Street Could Talk, in 2018 to critical praise, and earned nominations for his screenplay at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Looked After Kid Paolo Hewitt 2003 Placed in care at a very early age, Paolo Hewitt went to live with a foster family where he endured extreme abuse and humiliation. Following years of abuse he was sent to Burbank children's home at the age of ten where he met a gang of children. Like him they were outsiders struggling to find their place in the world. External Website

Poetry Care Left Me Autumn Walsh 2021 Poetry and art by Autumn Walsh External Website

Performing Arts Jimmy Wayne Jimmy Wayne ​ Jimmy Wayne was born in North Carolina. He and his sister were in and out of foster care when their mother could not care for them. When he finished high school he worked at the Gaston Correction Facility before moving to Nashville, Tennessee where he signed a recording contract with DreamWorks Records in 2001. He released his debut single in 2003. In 2010, Jimmy Wayne sent out on a 2670km walk to raise awareness of the homelessness faced by young people aging out of the foster care system. External Website

Writers Barack Obama ​ ​ Barack Obama (b. 1961), 44th President of the US from 2009 to 2017 was in kinship care as a child and teenager. Barack's parents divorced when Barack was 2. His mother later married an Indonesian man and Barack lived with them for several years. When Barack was 10, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents in Hawaii so he could go to Punahou, a prestigious school. At some point, Barack's mother moved to Hawaii to get her Masters and Barack lived with her and his sister Maya for 3 years. Barack returned to live with his grandparents when his mum went back to Indonesia for a year to do the fieldwork for her Masters. Barack Obama has published 4 books (including Dreams from My Father in 1995) and numerous research and other articles. External Website

Television Shows Unorthodox ​ 2020 Unorthodox is a German-American Netflix series inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Esty, a 19 year old woman who grew up in kinship care, escapes from her ultra orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, to Berlin, Germany but is chased by her husband. External Website

Sport Walter Tull Walter Tull ​ Walter Tull (1888-1918) was a Black British professional footballer and British Army officer. Walter Tull was born in Kent, England. His father was a carpenter and son of a slave in Barbados. His mother was from Kent. In 1895, Walter's mother died, followed by his father in 1897. Walter and his brother, Edward, were sent to the Methodist Children's Home and Orphanage in Bethnal Green, London. Walter Tull began playing professional football for Tottenham Hotspur in 1909. He then transferred to Northamptown in 1911. He was the first Northampton Town player enlist in the British Army when war broke out in 1914. Tull was killed in action on 25 March 1918. External Website

Performing Arts Prince (musician) Prince ​ Prince Rogers Nelson (1958 – 2016) was an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation. Prince was born in Minneapolis to jazz musician, John Nelson, and jazz singer, Mattie Shaw. His parents separated when Prince was about 10. From then he alternated living with both of them, even after his mother remarried. Hayward Baker, Prince’s stepfather, took the boy to see James Brown, an important influence on Prince’s songwriting and performing. Prince became good friends with Andre Anderson (to become known as Andre Cymone), a newcomer to Prince’s school at around age twelve. After Prince became tired of moving between his mother’s and his father’s house, he ran away and moved in with Andre and his family. Prince was still in his teens when he signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. His second album, Prince (1979), sold more than 1 million copies. External Website

Television Shows Counterpart ​ 2017 Counterpart (2017) is an American sci-fi thriller in which the earth becomes 2. In one of the 2 worlds a terrorist cell sets up a boarding school to train children as 'soldiers'. Some of the children are orphans, others have been handed over willingly by their parents. There is also Nadia (Sara Serraiocco), a girl who was in foster care who becomes an assasin in one world, and a violinist in the other. Much of the conversation is about the different directions we take in life, our 'shadow' sides (following Carl Jung), and how we can be influenced by nationalist agendas. External Website

Non Fiction Stella's Story Louise Allen 2020 The first in the series, Stella's Story, tells the story of a young girl scarred by an abusive past. Named after the lager that christened her at birth, Stella's life is characterised by instability and neglect. Her teenage mother abandons her in the first few weeks of her life, and left in the 'care' of her father, she ends up lying deserted in a house with no food, no water, no clothes, and no warmth. She eventually lands in the care of foster carer Louise, who is determined to change her life for the better. Things seem to be going well - but when Stella has a startling response to having her photo taken, it becomes clear the scars of her abuse run deeper than anyone could have ever guessed. External Website

Films/Videos Luce ​ 2019 Luce Edgar was adopted from war-torn Eritrea and at the end of his high schooling is a star pupil. He develops animosity towards his history teacher, a woman he believes treats students unfairly depending on whether they fit stereotypes or not. External Website

Television Shows The Chalk Line ​ 2023 The Chalk Line (2022) is a Spanish thriller on Netflix. One night, Paula (Elana Anaya) and her husband Simon (Pablo Molinero) find a small girl wandering in their neighborhood. When the parents of 6-year-old Clara (Eva Tennear) can’t be find, Paula and Simon agree with the local authorities that they’ll provide a temporary foster care placement for her. Carla is refusing to speak and her movements are limited to within the placement of chalk lines. External Website

Academic Articles The Mem Sahib, the Worthy, the Rajah and His Minions: Some Reflections on the Class Politics of The Secret Garden Jerry Phillips 1993 The preeminent influence on twentieth-century British society has arguably been the decline of the British Empire. For over three hundred years, the construction and maintenance of the imperial system provoked themes which reverberated at every level of the British polity—that is to say, it set limits, effective cultural parameters, on what it was and what it meant in terms of lived experienced to be British in relation to foreigners from the four corners of the globe...Clearly, the British Empire was not the sole cause of any one of these historical trajectories, but its pervasive influence is detectable in all of them. Thus, the end of empire has had significant consequences on a number of fronts, ranging from the macroeconomic to the micropolitical. External Website

Non Fiction American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Secret History of Adoption Gabrielle Glaser 2021 In 2021, American journalist Gabrielle Glaser published American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption. Glaser used the case study of a teenage girl and her baby to tell the story of the mid-century practice of sending off ‘unwed’ girls and women to have their babies in secret and then ‘relinquish’ them to an adopting couple. For the next 50 years, the mother in the story, Margaret, regrets the loss of her son; the adoptive parents are bewildered by their son; and the son, David, hears he was chosen by his adoptive parents but wonders why his birth mother rejected him. There was something about post-war America, argues, Glaser, that encouraged the creation of ‘perfect’ nuclear families. Yet the adoption agencies collecting fees didn’t consider the feelings of adoptees, let alone that crucial medical information was not being passed along. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929 Claudia Nelson 2003 When Massachusetts passed America’s first comprehensive adoption law in 1851, the usual motive for taking in an unrelated child was presumed to be the need for cheap labor. But by 1929―the first year that every state had an adoption law―the adoptee’s main function was seen as emotional. Little Strangers examines the representations of adoption and foster care produced over the intervening years. Claudia Nelson argues that adoption texts reflect changing attitudes toward many important social issues, including immigration and poverty, heredity and environment, individuality and citizenship, gender, and the family. She examines orphan fiction for children, magazine stories and articles, legal writings, social work conference proceedings, and discussions of heredity and child psychology. Nelson’s ambitious scope provides for an analysis of the extent to which specialist and mainstream adoption discourse overlapped, as well as the ways in which adoption and foster care had captivated the public imagination. External Website

Authors P Neil Morrissey's rags to riches tale of growing up in Stoke-on-Trent care home ➝ I wasn't told why I was taken into care. For years I thought it was my fault ➝ Children in care are not just numbers: we must challenge the stigma ➝ Neil Morrissey revisits his children's home roots ➝ Benjamin Perks: Blogsite ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast James VI and I: Life of the Week History Extra Podcast 2024 In this History Extra podcast, historian Joe Ellis discusses the life of King James VI of Scotland (1566-1625) who also became King James I of England (from 1603 until 1625) Joe Ellis describes James VI as a “cradle king” because he was “effectively orphaned” after his father, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was killed in 1567 and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned the same year. Although Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle in 1568, she never saw her son again. James VI/I is remembered for Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up parliament and assassinate him; for his obsession with witches; and for commissioning what’s known as the King James bible. External Website