Name: A child of the state
Uploaded: 2012-10-24T15:00:52Z
Duration: 15 min
Description: Literature has long been fascinated with fostered, adopted and orphaned children, from Moses to Cinderella to Oliver Twist to Harry Potter. So why do many parentless children feel compelled to hide their pasts? Poet and playwright Lemn Sissay tells his own moving story.

Literature has long been fascinated with fostered, adopted and orphaned children, from Moses to Cinderella to Oliver Twist to Harry Potter. So why do many parentless children feel compelled to hide their pasts? Poet and playwright Lemn Sissay tells his own moving story.

A child of the state

Society celebrates fictional fostered and orphaned children like Harry Potter and Cinderella, yet real children in care are too often hidden in shame. The journey from state care to adulthood can include isolation, loss of identity, and a struggle for dignity. One vivid story recounts a child shuffled through homes, wrongly imprisoned, and stripped of family roots. The true measure of a democracy is revealed in how it treats its most vulnerable child—the child of the state.