Listen to a One Family radio documentary

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On February 13th this year, Dublin City FM broadcast a 30-minute radio documentary about One Family. It features interviews with One Family staff members and parents who have availed of our services, offering an insight into what we do and why we do it.

Produced by Pearlman Media, the documentary was part of Faith, Hope & Charity. This six-part series aimed to explore ‘the tenacity and strength of human kind to cope with what ever life throws at it, the generosity of volunteering and the commonality of hopes and dreams for the future’. The other charities featured in the series are the Peter McVerry Trust, Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind, the Samaritans, D15 Charity and Ronald McDonald House.

Click here to listen to the One Family podcast.

 

 

                                                                                                     

 

 

 

 

One Family reiterates need for social justice for one-parent families in Ireland

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Press Release

One Family Reiterates Need for Social Justice for One-parent Families in Ireland

Today is UN World Day of Social Justice which aims to promote poverty eradication and social integration. The IMF ranks Ireland as the 15th in the world by GDP per capita yet 232,000 children are at risk of poverty, which represents 18.8% of all children in Ireland according to the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Ireland for 2011 released last Wednesday by the Central Statistics Office. The 2011 Census shows that there are 215,315 one-parent families in Ireland, accounting for 26% of all families with children, and 22% – almost 352,000 – of all children. SILC demonstrated that one-parent households are the most deprived, with 56% classified as deprived.

Stuart Duffin, One Family’s Director of Policy & Programmes, responds to the findings: “Our analysis of national studies – GUI, CSO ESRI – and evidence gathered by One Family over 40 years demonstrate that child poverty is not a natural phenomenon. It is a political phenomenon – the product of choices and actions made by government and society.”

Mr Duffin welcomes the recommendations in Investing in Children: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage (2013) spearheaded by László Andor, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, as today the European Commission adopts its new social investment package with a call for greater focus on social investment in the national reform programmes of all Member States. This report recognises that addressing child poverty is central to achieving Europe’s 2020 “smart, green and inclusive growth strategy”.

The Commission’s recommendations provide helpful guidance to the Irish State on how to tackle child poverty and promote children’s well-being. It calls for a children’s rights approach and integrated strategies based on three pillars:

  • access to adequate resources;
  • access to affordable quality services; and
  • children’s right to participate.

One Family also calls on the Irish Government to identify the steps that should be taken to end child poverty in Ireland in line with the new EU recommendations as a matter of urgency.

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About One Family
One Family was founded in 1972 and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families. We offer support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to those working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 622 212, counseling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today, with events taking place this year on May 19th. For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview
Karen Kiernan, Director of One Family
Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes
t: 01 662 9212

 

Survey on Income and Living Conditions 2011 finds lone parent households are most deprived

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The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Ireland for 2011, a household survey covering a broad range of issues in relation to income and living conditions.

These new figures show that lone parent households are the most deprived, with 56% classified as deprived. According to the survey, 232,000 children are at risk of poverty, which represents 18.8% of all children in Ireland, a slight increase from 18.4% in the previous year. One in seven of those at risk of poverty has a job, according to the statistics, and over half (50.7%) of the population would be at risk without social welfare payments.

Responding to the findings, Stuart Duffin, One Family’s Director of Policy & Programmes, said: “The urgent problems today are the growing number of families making the difficult choice between heating and eating, or getting sucked into the spiral of rent arrears, pay day loans and debt. A central focus on family incomes has to remain, alongside a step change in government strategy on living wages, affordable housing and affordable childcare so that more families can balance their budgets and give their children decent life chances.”

Stuart Duffin further commented: “One Family hopes that Ministers will now take a robust evidence informed approach to policy and start providing income security and making work pay for those families and children in most need.”

Read the CSO press release here. Further analysis by The Irish Times can be found here: Quarter of population classified as deprived | Unravelling the facts, and myths, of Irish inequality | Record numbers in poverty, CSO

 

 

One Family welcomes research which indicates that focusing on family type as a predictor for child well-being is irrelevant

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One Family today welcomes research from UCD analysing 9 year olds in the Growing Up in Ireland data which strongly indicates that focusing on family type as a predictor for child well-being is irrelevant.

One Family Director Karen Kiernan welcomed the report saying: “This research confirms what we have seen for 40 years in One Family; that lone parents are doing the very best they can in difficult circumstances to raise their children well. We have always found the argument about married families being better to be ridiculous, especially given that so many one-parent families are created through the dissolution of marriage, but this is a clear message to policy makers that education of mothers is important for the well-being of their children.”

Kiernan continued: “The research indicates that never-married lone mothers have far fewer children than average, are more likely to have their child at a young age and to have lower education levels and this is the most vulnerable family form in Ireland at the moment. This type of parent is also less likely to form a second union during the child’s younger life.”

The extent and nature of shared parenting between parents who do not live together was also looked at in the research and moderately high levels of contact between children and their non-resident parent were found. Karen Kiernan commented on this: “One Family has been working to promote positive and constructive shared parenting in one-parent families for many years and we are pleased to finally see some statistics on the extent of this in Ireland. Whilst shared parenting is not the majority practice, daily or weekly contact between children and their non-resident parent is very common and this is good news.”

Quotes from the study press release:

“It shows that family type is not the over-riding influence on the well-being of a child,” said lead author Dr Tony Fahey, of the UCD School of Applied Social Science.

“Our findings show only a slight, or, in many cases, a complete absence of differences in the indicators of child well-being between children of two-parent married families, co-habiting families, step-families, and one-parent families.”

“The single most important mechanism that public policy can use to combat family problems is to tackle educational disadvantage.”

Full research report here.

For more information, contact:

Karen Kiernan, Director, One Family 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191.