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Actors Brian Cox ​ ​ Brian Denis Cox (born 1 June 1946) is a Scottish actor who works in film, television and theatre. Brian's father died when Brian was eight and his mother was institutionalised. Brian was cared for by his older sisters until his mother came home. Brian has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he gained recognition for his portrayal of King Lear. He currently stars as media magnate Logan Roy on HBO's Succession. Cox is also known for appearing in Super Troopers, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, X2, Braveheart, Rushmore, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Troy. He was the first actor to portray Hannibal Lecter on film, in 1986's Manhunter. An Olivier Award, Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner, Cox has also been nominated for a BAFTA and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2006, Empire readers voted him the recipient of the Empire Icon Award. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women Jenny Hartley 2008 Jenny Hartley's 2008 book, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, tells the fascinating story of Charles Dickens setting up a refuge for girls and women where they were trained as domestic servants and then set out to the colonies. Urania Cottage was funded by philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts but Dickens was involved from the outset, organising furniture and detailing how the Cottage was to be run. The Cottage had room for 13 girls (some as young as 14) and young women and on entering Urania they had to agree to migrating after 12 months or so. Jenny Hartley estimates 100 girls emigrated during the 12 years Dickens was involved. Many then disappeared, but she's managed to trace the descendants of some. External Website

Authors N Jack Nicholson ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Dussa and the Maiden's Prayer Walter Jacobsen 1994 Walter Jacobsen reflects on the childhood he spent in the Parkville Children's Home, and in foster care in rural Victoria, South Australia External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Back on the block: Bill Simon's story Bill Montgomerie Simon et al. 2009 Stolen, beaten, deprived of his liberty and used as child labour, Bill Simon’s was not a normal childhood. He was told his mother didn’t want him, that he was ‘the scum of the earth’ and was locked up in the notorious Kinchela Boys Home for eight years. His experiences there would shape his life forever. Bill Simon got angry, something which poisoned his life for the next two decades. A life of self abuse and crime finally saw him imprisoned. But Bill Simon has turned his life around and in Back on the Block, he hopes to help others to do the same. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness Audrey Punnett 2014 The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness addresses loneliness and the feeling of being alone in the world, two distinct characteristics that mark the life of an orphan. Regardless if we have grown up with or without parents, we are all too likely to meet such experiences in ourselves and in our daily encounters with others. With numerous case examples, Dr. Punnett describes how loneliness and the feeling of being alone tend to be repeated in later relationships and may eventually lead to states of anxiety and depression. The main purpose of this book is not to just stay within the context of the literal orphan, but also to explore its symbolic dimensions in order to provide meaning to the diverse experiences of feeling alone in the world. In accepting the orphan within, we begin to take responsibility for our own unique life journey, a privileged journey in which one can at some point in time say with pride, I am an orphan. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Aboriginal women by degrees : their stories of the journey towards academic achievement Mary Ann Bin-Sallik 2000 This book includes the story of Mirrakopal or Miriam Stead Raymond who was born c1948 and her people are the Marranguggu Mak Mak of Finniss River in the the Northern Territory. Mirrakopal was taken from her family as a child and grew up in a white foster family in Adelaide, South Australia. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Conversations with Myself Nelson Mandela 2011 From letters written in the darkest hours of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, Conversations with Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure. Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or transcribing troubled dreams on the desk calendar in his prison cell on Robben Island; writing journals while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle in the early 1960s, and conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded conversations. External Website

Authors V Leonardo da Vinci ➝ Back to Top

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Children of Looked After Children: Outcomes, Experiences and Ensuring Meaningful Support to Young Parents In and Leaving Care Louise Roberts 2021 Based on groundbreaking original research, this book provides a comprehensive account of the issues surrounding pregnancy and parenthood for young people in and leaving care. Featuring the voices of care-experienced parents, together with reflections from practitioners, it offers valuable insights into the issues facing this group. Using qualitative data to explore why parenthood is such an important issue for young people in and leaving care, this book shows what can be learned from their experiences in order to improve outcomes for parents and children in the future. The author highlights the practical and emotional needs of care-experienced parents and gives clear advice for practitioners on how these needs might be better addressed through summary points, practice guidance and recommendations for policy and practice. External Website

Actors Gary Coleman ​ ​ Gary Wayne Coleman (February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010) was an American actor, comedian, and writer. An adoptee, Coleman is one of the highest-paid child actors in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was rated first on a list of VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars" on television, and received several awards and nominations throughout his career, including winning two Young Artist Awards and four People's Choice Awards. He was best known for his role as Arnold Jackson in the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986), for which he received the Young Artist Award for Best Young Actor in a Comedy Series, as well as three other Young Artist Award nominations. Despite having a successful acting career, Coleman struggled financially in later life. In 1989, he successfully sued his parents and business adviser over misappropriation of his assets, only to declare bankruptcy a decade later. External Website

Artists Robi Walters ​ ​ Robi Walters is a London-based artist. He takes unwanted, discarded objects and turns them beautiful and ‘wanted’ works of art reflecting the spirit of transformation with which he has turned his own life around. At 5 years old, Robi found himself firstly in kinship care with his grandparents and then foster care after the tragic death of his brother in a house fire. He lost his mother, his brother and his life as he carried around a heavy burden for the next 35 years. Art transformed him and his life as well as EDMR therapy which finally set him free. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Charlie, the ratbag orphan: an orphan survivor in Australia Alan Walker Walker et al. 2010 Charlie was born in 1936. He was abandoned and raised in orphanages from when he was four days old. At age 15, Charlie was made to leave the only home he knew at St Augustine’s and had to take up what he described as slave labour. Because of the extreme abuse he suffered, Charlie fled his abusers and survived on the streets of Melbourne. Charlie worked hard to improve his life. He became an A grade jumping jockey, and later worked various jobs including being a bird smuggler. After his wife died, he was left to raise four daughters on his own; he was determined to give his daughters the love and protection he never experienced. External Website

Academic Articles Popular perceptions of disrupted childhoods Kirsty Capes 2017 We need new stories about what happens to looked-after children. For decades, public policy-making has fundamentally failed looked-after children within the care of local governments across the UK. The care system very rarelyA common trope of children’s fiction is the representation of child protagonists as victims of some form of disrupted parenting. Disproportionately, child protagonists across the children’s canon are orphans; in foster care or other kinds of institutional care such as boarding schools; living with inadequate, neglectful or otherwise insufficient parents; or raised by relatives. Research shows that ‘problem children’ – those who are victims of disrupted parenting – are more susceptible to what is frequently termed as ‘poor outcomes’ in adulthood. These can range from addiction issues to criminal behaviour and time in prison, to mental health problems including depression. Children’s fiction informs and amplifies this narrative of ‘problem children’ being destined for failure in later life, through its representations of children in care, orphans and so on. This slippage between public consciousness and popular culture creates a cultural hegemony whereby children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are conditioned from a young age – through children’s fiction and other mediums – to believe that they are abject or extraneous to societal structures. Drawing on 20th and 21st century children’s fiction, from Francis Hodgson Burnett to J K Rowling, Roald Dahl to Lemony Snicket, C S Lewis to Jacqueline Wilson, this paper will demonstrate how children’s fiction serves to ‘other’ child readers from disrupted parenting situations. Using contemporary Marxist-feminist literary theory and socio-political contexts, the paper will also demonstrate the undeniable correlation between working-class narratives and representations of disrupted care in children’s fiction. 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

Autobiography/Memoir Family Secrets: A Writer's Search for His Parents and His Past David Leitch 1986 Recounts a true-life detective story about the author's search for his natural parents, the discovery of skeletons in the family closet, and his struggle with emotional turmoil, disappointment, and parental disapproval External Website

Actors Adam Beach ​ ​ Adam Beach (born November 11, 1972) is an Aboriginal Canadian actor. Adam Beach was born on the Dog Creek Reserve near Ashern in Manitoba, Canada. Adam’s parents, Sally and Dennis Beach, died within forty-one days of each other. Adam and his brothers first went to live in Winnipeg with their paternal aunt. Five years later, they began living their paternal uncle, Chris Beach. Adam Beach became interested in drama during High School and he didn’t complete his final year. However, he did find work in film and television. Most recently he has starred in Hostiles (2017) as Black Hawk, and the Netflix original film, Juanita (2019) as Jess Gardiner. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Jacqueline Wilson (New Casebooks) Lucy Pearson 2015 Tracy Beaker has become the most well-known care experienced character in the 21st Century. This collection of newly commissioned essays explores Beaker and Wilson's literature from all angles. The essays cover not only the content and themes of Wilson's writing, but also her success as a publishing phenomenon and the branding of her books. Issues of gender roles and child/carer relationships are examined alongside Wilson's writing style and use of techniques such as the unreliable narrator. The book also features an interview with Jacqueline Wilson herself, where she discusses the challenges of writing social realism for young readers and how her writing has changed over her lengthy career.Over the last twenty years, Jacqueline Wilson has published well over 100 titles and has become firmly established in the landscape of Children's Literature. She has written for all ages, from picture books for young readers to young adult fiction and tackles a wide variety of controversial topics, such as child abuse, mental illness and bereavement. Although she has received some criticism for presenting difficult and seemingly 'adult' topics to children, she remains overwhelmingly popular among her audience and has won numerous prizes selected by children, such as the Smarties Book Prize. External Website

Authors S Samuel Robin Spark ➝ Back to Top

Academic Articles Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America Daniel Cohen 2012 Sometime after July 1851, Mary Field Williams Gibson, a teenage orphan from Vermont, moved to Boston to make her fortune. By the following summer, the 17 year old had begun publishing powers and short stories. Writing under the pseudonym, Winnie Woodfer, Gibson soon became a major contributor to several of Boston's most popular papers. In this paper, Daniel Cohen discusses the life and work of Winnie Woodfern. External Website