Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland

Terms of Reference of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes

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The Department of Children and Youth Affairs advised today that those wishing to make a submission regarding the Terms of Reference of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes should, in order to adhere to the tight timeframe agreed, lodge their submissions no later than 12.00 pm on Monday 30 June 2014.

One Family has made its submission which can be read/downloaded here: One Family Terms of Reference for Commission of Investigation into Mother & Baby Homes

Minister Flanagan stated today:

“Following the Government decision to establish a Commission of Investigation, there have been calls for the inclusion of a range of other institutions and concerns and these will be given consideration as part of the process underway.

“I am pleased to have an opportunity to meet with a number of advocacy groups as well as the Opposition spokespersons this week. Any submissions made to me during these consultative meetings, which are ongoing, will be fed into the process.

“I am working on an inclusive basis on this important initiative and I wish to see an effective Commission in place which will address these important matters on a sensitive and timely basis.”

The dedicated email address which facilitates submissions regarding the terms of reference of the Commission of Investigation is motherandbabyhomes@dcya.gov.ie. Further information is available here.

Clann: Ireland’s Unmarried Mothers and their Children: Gathering the Data (‘Clann’), a joint initiative by Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) and JFM Research (JFMR), aims to assist those who wish to give evidence to the Commission by arranging free legal assistance for individuals to make full written statements. Further information is available here.

 

 

Image: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland

One Family Pre-Budget Submission 2015

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“If you looked at me you’d never think I have only €16 to my name. I wear a suit to work in a very well known company, my son is in a good crèche, I live in a 3 bedroom house (because it’s €100k in negative equity so I can’t afford to sell it). And here I am, without money for food.” – Lone parent quoted in One Family’s Pre-Budget Submission 2015

The overarching message of our Pre-Budget Submission 2015 is that all people share in Ireland, and we must believe that government has a responsibility to help people develop their strengths and their potential. We must look to long-term programmes to empower our communities, rather than short-term patches.

Last year we called for collaborators to work with One Family on an on-going basis in crafting our pre-budget submission. Subsequently, the One Family Budget Panel was formed in January 2014. The panel consists of twelve parents. It comprises those parenting alone and sharing parenting; parents from each Provence – urban and rural are represented; the age distribution of representation goes from 24 to 55; 60% of the parents are working either part or full-time; 45% of the parents are in education and/or training full or part-time; the gender split is 85% female and 15% male; 65% of the panel’s parents are in receipt of some form of social assistance, either One Parent Family Payment, Family Income Support or Carer’s Allowance.

The panel makes up a representative sample of lone parents across Ireland and its members collaborated with One Family to produce a pre-budget submission which reflects the lived reality for one-parent families in Ireland.

One Family further ensured the inclusion of the voices of lone parents and parents sharing parenting in our Pre-Budget Submission by inserting direct quotes from parents who responded to our monthly surveys and other One Family initiatives. Some of these quotes are included below:

“No one realises how vulnerable a single parent on benefits actually is. The housing and childcare are the two biggest practical issues I faced, along with stigma and isolation and loneliness and all the rest of it…when you cannot find a roof over your head it really hurts, it affects your mental health also.” 

“For all the talk and publicity about anti-discrimination, there are many instances of legalised discrimination against lone parents in this country. Even if childcare was available, One Parent Family recipients cannot avail of employment where the employer is receiving Revenue Job Assist or JobsPlus schemes.”

“I believe my child deserves the same rights and to be treated with the same dignity as any child of a two parent family. What prevents this from happening is lack of adequate and affordable childcare.”

 “I feel as I have been discriminated against by Revenue and the Government on these tax credit changes based on the fact that I am a dad and not the recipient of the children’s allowance. This has affected my net income, which is no more than the average industrial wage, by reducing it by €47 per week. This is crippling my ability to survive and meet my financial commitments and most importantly my ability to do the things I have endeavoured to do with my children.”

“I have a mortgage but since the breakdown of my marriage I am in significant arrears. Other party not engaging. I am struggling to keep a roof over my daughters head. No mortgage supports available to me.”

“We are caught in positions that revolve around our child care hours and location. It is extraordinarily difficult to further our careers as generally promotion equals more hours, and/or additional training which is impossible when you have to race back before the crèche closes.”

“It’s the feeling of being trapped by your circumstance, of knowing that you’ll never get out of it, that causes the low feelings and of feeling like a failure as a mother towards your child. It’s the fact that it’s not a temporary situation that causes these feelings for me. And it seems to be so hard for other people to understand, and makes it all the more difficult to handle, causing further isolation, maybe secrecy of the situation, bringing only further feelings of inadequacy.”

“What we need now, both lone mothers and fathers, is for policy makers to recognise the difficulties we face in parenting alone. We’re not looking for favours, just equal opportunities to provide for our kids to the best of our abilities.”

If you wish to read/download One Family’s Pre-Budget Submission 2015, it is available here: One Family 2015 Pre-Budget Submission_June 2014.

 

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One-Parent Family Success Stories at One Family and our Pre-Budget Submission

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Press Release


One-Parent Family Success Stories at One Family

Government Must Step Up to the Mark
and Enable Lone Parents to have a Fighting Chance in our Economy

www.onefamily.ie

(Dublin, Wednesday 18 June 2014) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for one-parent families – celebrates the achievements of almost 100 lone parents who have completed its courses throughout the past year at a Graduation Ceremony in the Conference Centre, Dublin Castle on Thursday 19 June at 10am in the week that it also makes its Pre-Budget Submission calling on Government to invest in one-parent families.

Recent response to media coverage of mother and baby homes has demonstrated again that people, women in particular, who parent alone still experience stereotyping, stigma and shame. One Family issued a statement in response to this harrowing topic last week which can be read here. This coverage has proved distressing for many One Family clients, lone parents and their children. Now, it is timely to celebrate those inspirational lone parents and people sharing parenting who have successfully overcome many challenges in pursuit of their awards.

Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, comments: “The parents celebrating their graduation this week want to learn more and they want to work. They want to build on the successes being celebrated. 58% of lone parents in Ireland today are working. One Family wants to see a clear political commitment in the 2015 budget to enable those most in need to return to work and education and create better futures for their children by provision of key supports such as affordable, quality childcare. An investment in childcare is an investment in one-parent families.”

Many of today’s Graduands have completed One Family’s flagship New Futures training which is FETAC Level 4 accredited and offers personal and professional development with wrap-around supports including one-to-one mentoring. Others have completed the One Family parenting programmes Family Communications and Positive Parenting, designed to strengthen family relationships, enable parents to understand difficult behaviour in children, and learn techniques to promote conflict resolution. Other parents who are parenting alone or sharing parenting are to be celebrated for taking a pro-active role in crafting One Family’s Pre-Budget Submission by participating in the organisation’s Budget Panel to help ensure that the voices of one-parent and shared parenting families are heard by Government.

One Family’s Director of Policy and Programmes, Stuart Duffin, comments: “One Family’s Budget Panel members are asking a simple question: ‘Will the 2015 budget improve the position of the poorest families and will children’s well-being be prioritised as the economy recovers?’ Paid work can make a difference for families, but this needs to accommodate the needs of children, income adequacy and security. The government’s focus has been on economic growth and jobs as a silver bullet solution to poverty. However, many lone parents and those sharing parenting cannot undertake or maintain enough paid work to sustain a family because of changes in tax and the lack of jobs. It is vital that government adopts a comprehensive strategy to reduce child and family poverty, a much broader strategy is needed to address the underlying causes.”

People parenting alone – including those parents receiving their Certificates this week – are all job-seekers and need to have adequate income to raise their children. All parents need sufficient levels of income security but today Ireland’s poorest families do not have enough to live on. It is crucial that the social welfare safety net that supports families in tough times is repaired and strengthened to enable the one-parent families who need to avail of it to create better outcomes. Children in all families deserve the chance to thrive.

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About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families offering 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, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes the Family Day Festival, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 062 2023

Further Information/Scheduling

Shirley Chance, Director of Communications | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 414 8511

 

 

Family Communications Tightrope

10 Ways to Better Problem Solving

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All families experience problems at some time. No matter how strong a family unit is or how positive our relationships, siblings will still argue, parents may be stressed over finances, bedtime routines may be difficult to establish.  The demands of daily life can be challenging and problems can easily arise. If a recurring problem is not addressed, over time it can become a major issue and affect the quality of life and relationships at home for every member of the family. It is essential to recognise and address problems to help prevent this happening. Our ’10 Ways to Better Problem Solving’ can be useful in solving challenging family problems.

  1. Name the issue, identify the problem. Work on the easier issues first of all. Working out the smaller stuff gives you the confidence to address the bigger issues.
  2. Try to figure out how strongly everyone feels on the issue at hand by asking, on a scale of 1 to 10, how strongly do you feel about your point? 1 is not very strong and 10 is very strong.
  3. Do not attempt to start talking about a solution until you can truly re-state each person’s point to their satisfaction and understand it, and have established what, if any, common ground there is.
  4. Communicate about the problem with each other using the four-step method for clear and direct communication:
    • Observations | Be factual. Don’t judge or evaluate. State the problem clearly.
    • Feelings | Talk about what this observation makes you feel. Ask other family members what their feelings are about it.
    • Needs | Talk about the needs that cause these feelings.
    • Requests | Be clear, ask for – not demand – what you want. Other family members should have the option to say no and come up with alternatives.
  5. Come up with some solutions – ask everyone in the family for them.
  6. Select a solution.
  7. Act on the solution. Divide out responsibility amongst the members of the family.
  8. Appoint someone to monitor the action. For less serious issues, children can be responsible monitors too.
  9. Evaluate the whole thing, and within a reasonable time, ask if the solution is working? If not, pick another one to try. Talk about what you all learnt from the situation.
  10. Remember that is not your job as the parent to ‘fix’ life. Empower your children to make decisions and be responsible.

Having read these tips, you may also find our 10 Ways to Run a Family Meeting helpful.

If you would like support, information or advice in relation to the topic above, contact our lo-call askonefamily helpline on 1890 66 22 12 / support@onefamily.ie. One Family offers a range of training options to help parents and guardians to build on their parenting skills which you can find out about here. These include our upcoming Summer School of Parenting Skills Workshops in July.

This week’s ’10 Ways to …’ is adapted by One Family’s Director of Children and Parenting Services, Geraldine Kelly, from our Family Communications training programme.

Coming soon: 10 Ways to Develop Family Rituals and 10 Ways to Develop Coping Skills in Your Family.

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One Family Statement on Mother and Baby Homes

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One Family Statement on Mother and Baby Homes

One Family, in following recent media coverage in relation to the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, shares the widespread concerns voiced in relation to the treatment of mothers and children and to the remains of deceased infants which has led to the start of a wider conversation about how pregnant women came to be in such homes.

This organisation was founded as Cherish by a small group of unmarried mothers in 1972 who, against prevailing practice, decided that they wanted to keep their babies and raise them themselves. Our founders tell numerous stories of their difficult personal experiences in doing this, as well as those of the many women who turned up at their homes, at group meetings, or here to our offices at 2 Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin desperate for help because they were pregnant and not married which in countless cases had cost them their family relationships, jobs and homes.

Through the 1970s and 1980s the organisation worked hard to change the accepted ‘norms’ by lobbying for the introduction of the first social welfare payment to acknowledge the existence of women bringing up children on their own and to abolish the status of illegitimacy. More information on the history of One Family is here. Our founding member Maura O’Dea Richards has also previously published a book, Single Issue, about this era.

Maura O’Dea Richards said today: “One Family welcomes the Government’s Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and we will be making a submission to Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Charlie Flanagan TD, on appropriate terms of reference. We strongly believe that it will be of great benefit to individual members of families who spent time in mother and baby homes, as well as to wider society, if we are able to respectfully establish relevant facts about who lived and died in homes, who was adopted and where to, and we hear the experiences and voices of those who were born and lived in mother and baby homes.”

One Family’s Chairperson, John O’Connell, who was himself born in Bessborough Home and returned with his mother to her family at the age of six months, comments: “Unfortunately we are aware that secrecy and shame can still surround many women whose children were adopted from mother and baby homes. As a society we need to give a clear and strong message that this secrecy and shame was and is wrong. There are still opportunities for adopted family members to be reunited, for children and parents who lived in mother and baby homes to be heard and acknowledged, and for Irish society to finally learn these lessons and treat all children and families equally.”

Lone parents and their family members affected by the recent harrowing reports may wish to call One Family’s lo-call askonefamily helpline for support on 1890 66 22 12.