Volunteers wanted for Family Day!

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One Family is looking for volunteers to help plan our Family Day which takes place on Sunday 13th May in the Iveagh gardens from 11-5pm. Family Day is a national celebration of the diversity of families and family life in Ireland. ‘Mothers’ Day is for mums and ‘Fathers’ Day is for dads but Family Day is for everyone to celebrate all types of families. We are looking for enthusiastic and friendly people to fill four roles. Programme assistant – helping sell advertising space for our programme; Raffle assistant – helping find prizes for our raffle; Stage assistant – helping to organise great entertainment on the day; Arts and Crafts assistant – someone to oversee the arts and crafts area.These volunteer roles would be ongoing until May 13t but could be mostly done in your spare time. Please contact noconnor@onefamily.ie if you can help us!

One Family Director Karen Kiernan on RTE with Joan Burton

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One Family Director Karen Kiernan was on RTE TV’s Frontline last night with Joan Burton TD. Karen was speaking up for lone parents and the Jobbridge programme set up by government last week. Karen got to make a few points about the activation of lone parnents, http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0227/thefrontline.html at 44 minutes in.

Volunteers Needed for Media Research

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 Volunteers Needed for Media Research and Project Co-ordination for One Family 40th Anniversary

One Family is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families. Set up as Cherish in 1972, with Mary Robinson as Chairperson, we mark our 40th anniversary this year and have a number of campaigns and projects planned. We are looking for skilled volunteers or interns to help with the below projects:

  • 40 Stories – written project
    Job: Gather information and write up stories from former clients, of their experience of parenting alone or sharing parenting and of their experience with One Family.
  • An Oral History of One Family – audio project
    Job: Set up, record and edit interviews with the founders, early members and supporters of One Family.
  • Celebrating One-parent Families – major awareness-raising campaign
    Job: Gather together and write up profiles of 100 high profile people who live in or come from a one-parent family. To help change attitudes towards one-parent families, this campaign shares information on some of the many well known one-parent families that exist in Ireland and elsewhere.

If you are interested in volunteering your time free of charge for a great cause –  and feel you have the required skill-set for any of the above – please email your CV to comms@onefamily.ie.  Many thanks!

Briefing doc from DSP on final changes to OPF payment

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Here is the Briefing document on Changes to OFP  from DSP on the (final) changes to the One Parent Family payment following the budget. If you’ve any questions feel free to contact askonefamily helpline 1890622122. Several additional points that came up in the discussion were:

  • OPFP recipients who move on to the back to education scheme would not return to OPFP as new claimants but retain their original relation to the phasing in of the age reduction.
  • The non-cohabitation rule will not apply to new OPFP recipients who move on to a CE scheme, because with the loss of double payments the criteria applicable to them will be only those of the CE scheme. This is only for NEW applicants, those who are currently on CE scheme and in receipt of double payment (their OPFP) would need to meet the non-cohabitation rule.
  • The loss of the double qualified child increase for those OPFP recipients on CE will have this change automatically applied to their payment and will not need to contact Social Welfare.
  • OPFP recipients who move on to CE scheme will not lose their fuel allowance.
  • And finally, in relation to the phasing in of the new eligibility criterion, the date that the payment is cut is the child’s birthday and not the beginning  of the year. So for example, if the cut-off is 7 years of age, and the child enters the year at the age of six, they will retain eligibility until they turn 7.

Messiah raises €10,000 for One Family

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One Family is so grateful to The Culwick Choir and all who attended their wonderful Messiah concert in St Patrick’s Cathedral – thanks to you all we raised almost €10,000 for our askonefamily helpline 1890 662212. Hallelujah! Here is a short audio piece on the event…http://monicashamsterwheel.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/794/