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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

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

Autobiography/Memoir Gaining a Sense of Self Karen Laura-Lee Wilson 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. 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

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

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Butcher Boy Patrick McCabe 1992 The Butcher Boy is a 1992 novel by Irish writer, Patrick McCabe. It tells the story of Francis "Francie" Brady who ends up in an 'industrial school' where he is sexually abused by one of the priests. He is also befriended by a gardener. The title comes from Francie's work as a butcher and his dismembering of the body of a woman he murders. The Butcher Boy was adapted into an award winning film in 2007. External Website

Films/Videos Lucky 2011 How could a recently orphaned, 10-year old homeless South African boy ever be called Lucky? Over the grave of his dead mother, Lucky makes a promise to make something of himself. Leaving the security of his remote Zulu village for the big city with the hope of going to school, he arrives on the doorstep of an uncle who has no use for him. Lucky then falls in with Padma, an elderly Indian woman with an inherent fear of Africans, who takes him in as she would a stray dog. Together, unable to speak each other's language, they develop an unlikely bond. Through an odyssey marked by greed, violence, and, ultimately, belonging, Lucky shows how a child's spirit can bring out decency, humility and even love in adults struggling to survive in the new South Africa. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Storm Child Michael Robotham 2024 Storm Child (2024) is the 4th in Australian writer Michael Robotham’s Cyrus Haven & Evie Cormac series. Cyrus Haven – who was raised by his grandparents from age 13 – is a forensic psychologist. Evie Cormac is a young woman Cyrus Haven met in a youth detention centre. He fostered the girl until she turned 18 and he continues to provide a home for her. In Storm Child we learn more about Evie’s background, from the time she arrived in the UK as a 9 year old and when she was later found living in a house with a dead body. External Website

Authors S East West Street ➝ Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir Catherine de Saint Phalle 2016 Shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, this is a memoir of living with deeply flawed parents. The mother of English born Australian writer, Catherine de Saint Phalle (b. 1956), was in kinship care for half her childhood. Catherine was in foster care for some months. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Innocent Blood P.D. James 2011 If you are a PD James fan, I should say up front that Innocent Blood is very different from the Adam Dalgliesh detective series. It is a psychological thriller, a slow-building mystery which starts with little steps then, as the odd details start to make sense, the tension builds. It is the story of a young woman who knows she is adopted, who exercises her right to know the names of her birth parents, and finds something she never in a million years expected. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience My Ántonia Willa Cather 2023 The novel first published in 1918 tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, who goes to live with his grandparents, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions on both children, affecting them for life. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. External Website

Artists Ivan Durrant Australian painter, Ivan Durrant (b. 1947) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, one of 7 children. He was 7 when his mother – influenced by the father’s alcoholism- put her children into state care. Ivan lived in an orphanage from 1954 to 1962, but often went into foster care on farms during summer holidays. It was there he developed his passion for birds and animals. After Ivan was reunited with his family in 1962, he developed his interest in painting and held his first exhibition in St Kilda during 1970. Ivan Durrant is now known as an artist who uses art to create “great schock value”. His work is held in many public collections, including in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Children in care need long-term support, not punishment | David Akinsanya David Akinsanya (Children in Care) 2016 Too often, kids in care are simply contained and criminalised. If a permanent home can’t be found, then having a mentor would make a huge difference to young people’s lives, writes David Akinsanya. External Website

Radio & Podcast Bluebells on Bunny Hill Alan And Irene Brogan 2023 When Alan and Irene met in 1959, their connection was instant. Two isolated children, just seven and nine, found warmth and kindness in each other in a children’s home that was unwelcoming and strict. They would steal moments together up on Bunny Hill and talk about their lives. But the home had a rule that boys and girls could not mix. So, when their friendship was discovered, Alan and Irene were separated. On BBC Radio 4’s Life Changing, they explain how it would take four decades for them to find each other again. External Website

Authors N Voices from the Silent Cradles - Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children ➝ Imagining Adoption. ➝ Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929 ➝ The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature: Estate, Blood, and Body ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos Christmas Child 2004 Christmas Child (2004). After his adopted father dies, a mysterious photograph, which may be a clue as to his origins, leads a journalist Jack Davenport (William R. Moses) to a small Texas town at Christmastime. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Celestial Bodies Jokha Alharthi 2019 Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Celestial Bodies tell of Oman's evolution through the prism of one family's losses and loves. One of the characters, Salima, was in kinship care as a child. She lived with her uncle until she was 13, with her mother visiting occasionally. Salima returned to live with her mother at 13 but was promptly married off by her uncle. External Website

Films/Videos The Christmas Note 2015 The Christmas Note is a Christmas film originally broadcast on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel in 2015. The film is based on the book of the same name by Donna VanLiere. Gretchen Daniels moves back to hometown Wilsonville with her son Ethan. Neighbour & workaholic Melissa, discovers an unfinished note from her mother, who gave up a child for adoption. Gretchen (also adopted) convinces Melissa to search for her sibling. External Website

Children's Fiction The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1894 The tales in the book (as well as those in The Second Jungle Book, which followed in 1895 and includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. Mowgli was lost by his parents as a baby in the Indian jungle during a tiger attack, he is adopted by the Wolf Mother, Raksha and Father Wolf, who call him Mowgli (frog) because of his lack of fur and his refusal to sit still. Shere Khan the tiger demands that they give him the baby but the wolves refuse. Mowgli grows up with the pack, hunting with his brother wolves. In the pack, Mowgli learns he is able to stare down any wolf, and his unique ability to remove the painful thorns from the paws of his brothers is deeply appreciated as well. External Website