Little Big Man

Product Information

In and out of care from the age of five, Stanley J Browne says his “horror story” began aged eight, when he was separated from his siblings and fostered off to Nottingham. He rebelled against the system and later ended up in detention centres and prisons, dealing with drug addiction. His autobiography, Little Big Man (out 14 October), describes how he turned his life around to become an actor and musician. Clare Gorham Born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Lemn Sissay was placed in foster care as a baby, and sent aged 12 to the first of a series of children’s homes. Later, while piecing together his origins, he discovered that his mother had pleaded for his return and been denied by social services. Sissay has spoken out about his care experience and its many traumas throughout his career as a poet and broadcaster. Allan Jenkins 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. 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 Lucy Sheen, whose Chinese name is Chau Lai-Tuen, aged one in the home of her adoptive parents. Lucy Sheen

A decade ago, Clare Gorham was “very much pro” transracial adoption. “I would have said that the only thing a child needs is love,” she says, reflecting on her own experience of being happily adopted by her white family in Wimbledon in 1966. “Now my mindset is slightly different. I still think love is the most important thing. But it’s a bit of a B-movie of an existence. My parents were amazing, but their colour-blind approach wasn’t representative of society’s view of me.” Sylvan Baker Born into a Jamaican family in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. My own interests and experiences also weave into my stories so that readers can get an insight into my South Asian heritage, as you can see from this story about Karak Chai which I'm ever so passionate about! I hope to move, touch, and inspire my readers through sharing my story as a testament that our past doesn’t define who we are and that change is achievable, regardless of our circumstances and the cards we have been dealt in life. Above all else, it takes time to heal, and we are not alone. I hope readers will be able to see themselves in some form or another through my own story and identify with that common human trait of just wanting to be loved. Although this can be seen as being a bit of a cliche, but it’s the truth we can all relate to and keeps coming up time and time again. On some level I guess we all just want to be free. Free from self critique and self doubt. 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 BrambleMy care experience was both traumatic and enlightening,” says Johanan Walker, who went into care in east London after she had a baby at 12. “I was challenged with a lot of preconceived ideas and biases by the adults I was around, about whether I could be a mum and make it through against all odds.” Walker managed to hold on to her child and was later able to focus on education, “which saved me,” she says. Now she is a lived experience consultant and the co-founder of calling4gr8ness.org, supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. Sophie Willan It’s also a book about belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery. It was only when he was sent to a young offender’s institution that he slowly began to turn his life around. An intelligent and sensitive child, Browne’s narrative saw him descend into crime, heroin addiction and gang life.

When he was four, Kriss Akabusi’s parents returned to Nigeria, leaving him alone in the UK with his younger brother. They moved between several foster placements before entering a children’s home. Akabusi joined the British army aged 16 and later embarked on a glittering athletics career as a sprinter and hurdler. Ben Ashcroft FRSAThe way I see it, this should be something for people who are going through the system. Where they are, we have been; where we are, they can go,” says Akabusi who, like several others in the room, found his way through by joining the army. “It taught me the middle-class way of life: how to lay a table and make a bed and eat with a knife and fork. These are social graces that help us to move on.” Acting had always been a part of Stanley's school life, he would often take part in productions and impress teachers and parents. "Years later when I pulled myself together I went to Anna Schers theatre in Islington which was for inner city kids who couldn't afford to go to mainstream drama schools. I got an agent and started working, but surprise surprise I got roles playing the thief or robber. I just felt I had to hide it,” says Sophie Willan, creator and star of Alma’s Not Normal, of her experience in care – she spent much of her childhood in foster care in Bolton. “It was actually seeing Lemn [Sissay] perform that helped me realise that you could talk about it. He really put it on the map and allowed it to be something that we could be proud of as an identity and talk about as a political thing. So it didn’t just have to be: this is your problem. It could be: this is everybody’s problem.” Luke Wright I am the Race and Diversity Correspondent for MyLondon, and I enjoy writing about stories to do with ethnic minorities.

The issues around growing up in care don’t magically stop at 25, just because public policy stops,” says Jim Goddard, who went into care in Liverpool aged three. “They carry on, and people deal with them in various ways.” Goddard is the chair of the Care Leavers’ Association, which focuses on care leavers of all ages – it might help people access their care files, or deal with issues around social isolation. “The level of invisibility of the issues facing young people leaving care has not fundamentally altered in the past 20 years.” Akiya Henry When Allan Jenkins embarked on his gardening memoir Plot 29, he found himself writing about the “helplessness of seed” just three paragraphs in and was prompted to revisit his unsettled past, growing up in foster care in south Devon with his older brother Christopher. The memoir was warmly received, though Jenkins, who edits Observer Food Monthly, has mixed feelings about becoming a figurehead for care-experienced people. “Sometimes, if you’ve had my childhood, you try not to be defined by it,” he says. Richard Bramble Axa Hynes, right, with her foster sister Michelle Brown, also featured in the Foundling Museum photograph. Axa Hynes Problems with mental health not only impact the individual suffering, but also those around them. It can be devastating to witness someone struggling, but one man had to watch his own mum suffer while also dealing with his own life changing dramatically after she was diagnosed with a condition. 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.

To embrace the warrior and the humility side of ourselves that is within us all. Learning to love you for who are and not what others perception of you is or what they may want you to be. Jacaranda Books have revealed the final cover for Little Big Man, the gripping upcoming memoir from actor Stanley J. Browne. Donna Ludford applied to become lord mayor of the City of Manchester “to raise aspirations for young people in the care system”. She had a deeply unsettled childhood, moving between foster families and children’s homes from the age of six months, after her parents were badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Ludford began as a cleaner at Manchester city council before working her way up, earlier this year, to lord mayor. But success is “not about being the lord mayor,” she told a group of care leavers recently. “It’s about thriving in life and doing what makes you happy.” Zarina Bhimji I would say definitely invest in a ghost writer! Just to help get you started or at the very least help you to put a proposal together. There is a format the industry recognises, so it makes sense to start on the right foot, see it as an investment in yourself. Once you understand the logistics of how to go about things, then the rest will flow. Because her care experience happened so early – she was in and out of a foster home in east London until the age of five – Siroun Button never really thought of herself as somebody who’d been in care. “Now I’m starting to realise that it did really have an impact on me,” she says. To help others like her, Button has co-founded calling4gr8ness.org, a programme supporting care-experienced young adults in the creative industries. Lennox Cato DL

This is a great opportunity to celebrate our achievements,” says Keith Saha of the Foundling Museum project. “A lot of care-experienced people will also measure success by how we’re feeling internally, how we manage our mental health and wellbeing, and not always what we’re achieving externally.” Moved into a children’s home aged six, Saha then went to live with adoptive parents in Merseyside the following year – a complex but positive experience for which he feels “lots of gratitude”. Now he works as a theatre-maker working with young and emerging artists, many of whom are also care-experienced. Barrie Sharpe The 51-year-old says his life changed when his mum was diagnosed with schizophrenia (Image: MyLondon) 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 LeeMy 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. Because of it, he has to adopt the mantle of ‘man of the house’. Forced to scavenge for food and miss school to care for his baby brother, his life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system. An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley begins a descent into crime, heroin addiction and gang life. It is only when he is sent to a young offender’s institution that he slowly begins to turn his life around."