Louise Allen
Louise Allen is a campaigner for the rights of looked-after children, and the author of a bestselling series of books based on her experience of fostering children.
Instagram: @louiseallen7
Listen to Louise on Front Row
Biography
Louise Allen was a foster child who underwent an unspeakably tough childhood with cruel and sadistic foster-parents in the 1970s who then adopted her. She managed to stay alive by eating scraps fed to her by travellers camping nearby and found solace in art and the beauty of the natural world. At the age of 15 she ran away but found herself in a series of abusive relationships and resorted to drugs and alcohol to bury her pain. Eventually, her skills in painting and drawing and her determination not to let her childhood define her were what helped her forge a healthy adult life. The publication of her memoir, THROWN AWAY CHILD, by S&S in 2017 coincided with the start of her campaign, Looking After Looked After Children. She firmly believes that there is hope for all children who have been abused and that a damaged childhood does not need to scar a person for life.
Louise is the author of the bestselling THROWN AWAY CHILDREN series, which tells the stories of some of the children she has fostered and their often heartbreaking pasts. Her new series SLAVE GIRLS, about children caught up in the County Lines scandal, debuted in 2025.
She is also the author of a guide to adoption, HOW TO ADOPT A CHILD.
Now happily married with her own children, she also fosters children herself, and campaigns for a better system, doing what she can to right the wrongs still being perpetrated against foster children. Louise founded the charity Spark Sisterhood which creates a mentoring/networking-chain’ between experienced and successful business women, women who have themselves been in care, and girls leaving the care system now.
Louise has appeared on BBC's Front Row, Saturday Live, Radical with Amol Rajan, That’s Life, Loose Women and This Morning. She is a confident public speaker, eg she was invited to speak at The Care Experienced Conference to a mix of lawyers, foster carers, academics, social workers and -- for the first time ever — people who were in care.
Louise receives incredible feedback from readers. This is a typical response:
‘I have read some of your books in little more than a day! They are fantastic reads, hugely page-turning and so useful in my job (as a Forest School teacher in a Pupil Referral Unit) and at home, as a mother of teenage boys. Reading your experiences makes me more generous, patient and understanding as a parent.’
Books
