Little Big Man

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My own “success” happened in spite of my time in care, not because of it. I am not defined by my scars but by the incredible ability to heal. Healing can hurt too. Here are a few organisations for support and information: Become has been supporting and campaigning for children in care and young care leavers since 1985. The Care Leavers’ Association is a national user-led charity aimed at improving the lives of care leavers of all ages. The Fostering Network is the UK’s leading fostering charity; it champions fostering and seeks to create vital change. PAIN – Parents against Injustice is a voluntary organisation, run and funded by volunteers who provide help and support to families caught in the care system. Samaritans is a 24-hour service offering emotional support for anyone struggling to cope. One of the greatest signs of my own sense of independence when I left care was the day I could ask for help when I needed it. My care experience was lifesaving,” says Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan, who recently published a memoir called Would It Surprise You to Know ?. “My home situation was dire. My mother had schizophrenia, I had a stepfather who was very violent to my mother and to me. I wanted to be in care to get out of that situation.” His experience in children’s homes and foster families between Surrey and Lancashire was “excellent. I felt incredibly cared for and looked after.” Paolo Hewitt An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender’s institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around.

What I learnt about myself is the realisation that I have actually survived my trauma. I already knew how far I had come, but I almost belittled the trauma over the years because of my successes. Writing this memoir emphasised why I felt compelled to share my story with others in the first place. He said: "We were in a Children's home with other white people, so when you walk in it's a different smell, the food is different, washing powder is different, sheets smell different, your whole world changes. They want to help me and my siblings of course, but when you're torn from your family you just think these strange people have taken us away from my mum.Production editor Kamillah Brandes notes: "The vulnerability of young Stanley is immediately evoked, staring directly at the reader, but his gaze also holds a glimpse of the persistence and determination that helped to make Stanley who he is today."

It was amazing to be seen,” says Olumide Popoola about some of the social workers who helped her through care in Germany. She lived with a foster family from 12 to 14 and then spent a couple of years in a children’s home. Both places recognised her writing talent and helped her get work published. Now Popoola is a novelist and an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins in London. “I always feel these two years [at the children’s home] made it possible for me to be who I am today.” Janet Lee When Luis De Abreu was nine, he travelled from Madeira to join his mother in Jersey, where she’d been working for several years. Soon afterwards she died of cancer and De Abreu ended up, after several foster placements, living in the notorious Jersey children’s home Haut de la Garenne. He was badly bullied at school and his education “suffered terribly”, but he “soldiered on” and enrolled at Bird College aged 22 to study dance and musical theatre. He is now Bird’s principal and artistic director. Martin Figura

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I think of my life in two parts: before I traced my birth family and after,” says former Guardian journalist Hannah-Azieb Pool, who detailed the journey in her memoir My Fathers’ Daughter (republished this year). Pool was adopted from an Eritrean orphanage and lived in Sudan and Norway before coming to the UK aged six. Reconnecting with her birth family in Eritrea in her late 20s “allowed me to realise the multiplicities of who I am, to make connections around inter-country adoption, and the idea that you can belong in multiple places and with multiple families. It’s radically changed who I am.” Lucy Reynolds His impact on leprosy was a major one. His many official roles in leprosy committees and organisations afforded him a platform to advocate for scientific research on leprosy and for high standards of patient care. His bibliography includes over 500 scientific publications, mainly on leprosy, as well as many books and pamphlets. He died at home on World Leprosy Day, 29 January 1986, survived by his wife, Mali, and their three sons, Derek, Alastair, and Christopher. Mali Browne also died on World Leprosy Day in 2006. I was fostered till the age of one and then placed with my adoptive family,” says Annalisa Toccara. “Through my lived experience of being adopted, I co-founded a mental-health organisation called Adoptee Futures, which is led by adoptees and which centres adoptees. We look at reclaiming the adoption narrative and reframing the world’s view on adoption, and also helping adult adoptees heal from their trauma.” Louise Wallwein MBE Eventually by the age of 23, Stanley decided to turn his life around. After facing addiction, he was introduced to recovery through a friend at a point where he wanted to end his life. He also ended up receiving a lot of therapy and counselling, and when he finally got better he decided to pursue another path. I came into care when I was 13, due to being homeless,” says Sanna Mahmood. Her care experience in West Yorkshire “was reasonably positive, partly because I was just happy to have a home. Someone gave me a fish-finger sandwich and I was like, I’ve made it.” Leaving care was harder: “The social housing that I got put into was not the best – there were needles all over the floor and blood on the wall – and the support wasn’t always the greatest.” Support for care leavers has since improved, Mahmood says, thanks to new policies from her local authority in Kirklees. Jenny Bagchi

The 51-year-old says his life changed when his mum was diagnosed with schizophrenia (Image: MyLondon) I am the Race and Diversity Correspondent for MyLondon, and I enjoy writing about stories to do with ethnic minorities. An intelligent and sensitive child, Browne’s narrative saw him descend into crime, heroin addiction and gang life. As Vessels, Browne exhibits an unhinged personality that fits with his internal struggle to simultaneously love and hate his ex-wife, the mother that took his children from him when he simply aspired to change the world into something worth growing up in. That’s one opinion anyway. It isn’t difficult to empathise with the alternative – Grace’s plight, wife of a radical that kills for his beliefs, manifest in the carnal need to protect her children from their monstrous father. Both sides of the story are credibly acted out on stage, a power play where each actor jostles for the position of moral superiority. The individuals are indeed committed; Grace and supportive crutch Easley at times forget that they are held at gun point, such is their moral obligation to exert their supremacist views.It’s a mixture of stigma and admiration,” says Martin Figura of attitudes towards people in care. He spent his childhood moving between different carers after his mother was killed by his father in 1966. He wrote about the experience in his 2010 poetry collection Whistle, which was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes award and which Figura later turned into an Edinburgh show. He expected “a certain amount of difficulty” from the exposure but “it’s not made anything weird at all,” he says. “It’s been fine.” Greg Bramble Stanley J. Browne: This memoir touches on many topics that are significant in today’s society mental health, depression, addiction, incarceration, racism, loneliness, recovery, redemption and belonging. Arriving in Kinshasa (then Leopoldville) in 1936, Browne received additional training in tropical medicine and met Drs Clement Chesterman and Raymond Holmes, who would be his colleagues. Together, they travelled to the Yakusu missionary station, which oversaw health care for a 10,000 square mile area. Browne would work there until 1958. He was reportedly called 'Bonganga', or White Doctor, by the locals.