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Fiction featuring Care Experience

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Patience

Toby Litt

2019

Meet Elliott.
Elliott is hugely intelligent. He's an incredible observer. He has a beautiful and unusual imagination. To know him is to adore him.
But Elliott is also stuck. He lives in an orphanage in 1979. He spends his days in a wheelchair, in an empty corridor, or wherever the Catholic Sisters who run the ward have decided to park him.
So when Jim, blind and mute but also headstrong, arrives on the ward and begins to defy the Sisters' restrictive rules, Elliott finally sees a chance for escape. Together, they could achieve a magnificent freedom – if only for a few hours.
But how can Elliott, unable to move or speak clearly, communicate all this to Jim? How can he even get Jim to know he exists?
Patience is a remarkable story of love and friendship, courage and adventure. It is also about finding joy in the most unlikely of settings. Elliott and Jim are going to have fun.

Children and young people in social care, and those who have left, are often subject to stigmatisation and discrimination. Being stigmatised and discriminated against can impact negatively on mental health and wellbeing not only during the care experience but often for many years after too. The project aims to contribute towards changing community attitudes towards care experienced people as a group. See glossary HERE


Website set up with support from The Welland Trust 

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