I have written for The Independent, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Big Issue and a range of other newspapers and journals, around the world.

The Golly in the Cupboard: That Title, Racism and the G...Word

Explaining the origin of the controversial title and the reaction.

Download here .

The Rosemundy House of Shame

Investigating the treatment of Mavis Frampton and other women who sought refuse in the unmarried mothers home (listen to The Crying Shame broadcast here).

Download the document here .

An English “Magdalene Laundry” - The Daily Mail

In this article I highlight the caustic treatment suffered by mine and other unmarried mothers who gave birth in what during the 50s and 60s were often colloquially referred to as “pro homes” – less harsh versions of the Magdalene Laundries. It was produced with Eileen Fairweather, in The Daily Mail on 13th April 2012.

Read the full article here.

Bring Back Orphanages

Large children's homes had several benefits. Among them was the ability to accommodate siblings.  A German model could provide the template for their revival, wrote former Care Leavers' Association Chair Phil Frampton in Community Care Magazine (2011).

Download the article here.

My Life I Never Knew

Published in The Guardian - the original articles written at the time of my visit to Kendal to retrieve the files from Barnados which formed the basis of The Golly in the Cupboard. June 1999.

This is my life: the one I never knew

The final reckoning

Tracy Beaker Reviewed

This is a link to The Guardian article, which I wrote on the Tracy Beaker series and my interview with its author, Jacqueline Wilson. The article was published in The Society Guardian on 23 March 2005.

Jilly Cooper - Reviewed and Interviewed

This is a link to the Community Care Magazine article I wrote on Jilly Cooper’s novel, Wicked. My interview with the author was published in June 2006

A Better Way for Children's Respite Care

This is a link to The Guardian article of that name, which I wrote on residential respite care entitled. The article was published in The Education Guardian on 12 February 2008.

Capital Pains

In this article  in Shelter's Roof Magazine I investigate the damaging growth of venture capital in the care industry, March 2009. It preceded the dramatic 2011 collapse of Britain's biggest residential care provider, the venture capitalist- controlled, Southern Cross.

 Download this article as a PDF  here.

Who Watches the Watchers?

In this piece I investigate the dangers of and alternatives to Neighbourhood Watch for Shelter's Roof Magazine November/December 2008.

 This article can be downloaded as a PDF here .

Storytelling

This includes an article I wrote about Storytelling for The Education Guardian on 29 January 2008.

Born Homeless

Article in which I describe my time in care for Shelter's Roof Magazine July/August 2007.

The article can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Bring Back the Orphanages - The Insider, Channel 4

This Channel 4 programme, part of "The Insider" series, was broadcast on Friday March 9th 2007.  In the programme I argued the case for a more positive view and use of children's homes.

More detail of the programme can be found here.  You can watch the episode by clicking here.

The Golly in the Cupboard, BBC Radio - RIMA Award Winner

In June 2005, I presented the Radio Merseyside’s Golly in the Cupboard programme, based on my book The Golly in the Cupboard. The programme won the national Race in the Media award for Factual Radio programmes, beating off competition from 50 other national and local programmes.

More information can be found here.

Homeward Bound

In this piece I argue that it is the perpetrators rather than the victims of parental abuse that should be required to move out of the victim's home, and that young people should have equal right to the roof over their heads -  Shelter's Roof Magazine March/April 2008.

Download this article as a PDF here. 

The Right to Offend? Political Correctness or Social Manners

A feature in the Big Issue Magazine I wrote responding to an anti-political correctness article in their previous issue. April 2006

Download the full text as a PDF here. 

Freedom Road

In 1977 I reviewed Howard Fast's Freedom Road, a novel that graphically chronicled one of the most glorious and bitter periods in American blacks' fight for emancipation - the bloody struggle that followed the Union army's victory in the American Civil War. It has many lessons for those Blacks who saw Obama's Democrats as offering a real way forward for Black people. Read the full article here.

The Black Jacobins - CLR James

This book review by Phil Frampton was written in 1977 following the Soweto riots, which indicated that South Africa's apartheid regime was beginning to lose its hold on the black workers. Nelson Mandela was still in prison. The Black Jacobins records the successful uprisings of San Domingo's black and mulatto (mixed race) slaves against their colonial masters in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Whether or not Mandela read James's masterpiece, released from prison in 1990, he certainly followed a similar strategy to that of the Jacobins' leaders.  Read the full article here.

The Black Hole of Mumbai

On the evening of November 26th 2008 and for 48 hours more, a massacre of Indian and foreign tourists, business executives, religious leaders, rail travellers, street vendors and bystanders shook the world. The action of religious fascists, it left over 200 corpses littered around Mumbai. In The Black Hole of Mumbai (in three parts) through the eyes of a young Japanese woman caught up in the horror I record the ensuing drama.