Press Release Cherish/One Family Celebrates 45 Years of Achievement for Lone Parents Including Abolition of Status of Illegitimacy Reiterates that Government Action is Needed Now to Stop Rising Rates of Child Poverty  Organisation moves to Smithfield, Dublin 7 in July (Dublin, Tuesday 27 June 2017) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone and sharing parenting – celebrates its 45th anniversary in 2017. One Family was founded as Cherish in 1972. In that year, Maura O’Dea Richards placed an ad in the paper in the hope of reaching other women who were unmarried with children. A small group of brave, determined women[...]

One Family celebrates 45 years in 2017. We were founded by a small group of strong, brave women in 1972. You can read more about our history here. This year, we will also be moving from Cherish House on Lower Pembroke Street, our home for over 40 years, to our new building in Smithfield, Dublin 7 next month. It is fully accessible and larger, so that we can further extend our services to support even more parents and children through difficult times. Yesterday our founding member Maura O'Dea Richards and our CEO Karen Kiernan were interviewed on RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show. Maura[...]

Press Release New Report Calls on State to Support One-Parent Families to Escape Poverty  And Cites a Decade of One Family’s Research and Policy Work (Dublin, Friday 16 June 2017) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone and sharing parenting – responds to a report by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection on the Position of Lone Parents in Ireland which formed a significant part of the Committee’s Work Programme for the last twelve months. It includes a series of proposals to help alleviate the difficulties often faced by those parenting alone or sharing parenting, most of which refer to[...]

One Family welcomes the 25% increase in the Back to School Clothing & Footwear Allowance (BTSCFA) for children announced by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday as outgoing Minister for Social Protection. One Family called for an increase in the Allowance as part of our joint NGO Submission on Child Poverty and in our 2017 Pre- Budget Submission. This increase will make a difference to one-parent families on low incomes who struggle to meet high back to school costs for their children. We hope that the incoming Taoiseach will continue to take affirmative steps in ensuring that government meets its target to lift over 100,000 children out[...]

One Family welcomes the launch of a document on child poverty that puts forward real solutions to Government to end child poverty in all its forms. Developed under the auspices of the National Advisory Council on Children and Young People by a subgroup of members including One Family, it offers recommendations that can help Government to meet their commitment to lift 97,000 children out of poverty by 2020. Recent statistics from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC 2015) showed that children living in one-parent families had the highest consistent poverty rate at 26.2%, an increase from 25% in 2014.[...]