Our Vision
One Family believes in an Ireland where every family is cherished equally, and is enabled to enjoy the social, financial and legal equality to create their own positive futures.
Our Mission
One Family is working to ensure a positive and equal future for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and parenting around separation – changing attitudes, policies, services and lives. We are committed to achieving equality and respect for all families. While acknowledging that every family is unique, we will endeavour to bring about better lives for these parents and children. In addition to striving for fundamental attitudinal and structural change in our society, our services offer support in a family-centred way to individual families through times of change and difficulty, as well as supporting those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy.
Our Values
Respect, compassion for and acceptance of the parents, children and organisations that we come in contact with, are at the heart of what we do. We connect with others in a relationship of equals and are completely non-judgmental. We believe that we can hold the hope for the families we work with, especially when they are unable to. We achieve this through innovation, excellence, accountability and our family-centred approach. Since being founded as Cherish in 1972, One Family has been an organisation of determination, passion and courage, working with integrity towards achieving equality for all families in Ireland.
How will our vision become a reality?
One Family is a specialist service provider to people living in one-parent families. We work to capture their experiences and our service practices into policy positions so we can deliver improvements for the families we represent at a national level. This focus on improving the lives of one-parent families is fundamental to our work.
We want Ireland to have achieved the following by 2030:
- Child poverty rates in Ireland will be dramatically reduced as Government reaches its new child poverty target through a National Child Poverty Action Plan which will provide a range of universal and targeted services; targeted income transfers; inclusive employment and educational opportunities; and the necessary targeting of one-parent families for additional supports based on evidence.
- Family support services will be available for people parenting alone, sharing parenting, separating and for their children so that conflict and disruptions are minimised. These will be developed as part of the Family Law Justice Reform process and services such as a childcentred Family Law Service Model and a statutory Child Maintenance Service will be rolled out.
- One-parent families will be widely recognised, understood and celebrated as positive family forms. All families will have appropriate access to statutory services, policies and laws. Our Constitution will be updated so all families are protected and respected.
To make it happen:
We will fearlessly name the challenges faced by the families we represent and work with. We will speak out and challenge laws, policies and services that are discriminatory or inadequate. We will work with others to strategically achieve shared goals, while continuing to be accountable to all our stakeholders, uphold excellent governance standards and deliver quality specialist services.
“One Family is Ireland’s national organisation for one-parent families. We work with all types and all members of one-parent families, respecting the realities of family life, to affect positive change and achieve equality and social inclusion for all one-parent families in Ireland.”
— Karen Kiernan, CEO
