Cherish All The Children – a Documentary about our Groundbreaking Founders

“A one hour documentary that tells the story of brave single mothers who took on the government.”

Cherish All The Children is the remarkable story of One Family’s founders; those brave women who refused to give up their children for adoption 40 years ago. They formed Cherish, changed the law on illegitimacy and fought to get a single parent’s allowance.

Cherish was set up by single parents, for single parents and the documentary features interviews with our core founders Maura O’Dea Richards, Margaret Murphy, Evelyn Forde and Annette Hunter Evans who share their personal experiences and the challenges of being pregnant and single in Ireland four decades ago. It also features first President of Cherish, Mary Robinson, and Nuala Feric and Anna Lee, first staff members; with other contributors including CEO of One Family Karen Kiernan and Director of Policy, Stuart Duffin.

Cherish/One Family has brought about massive social and legal change for both parents and children since its foundation in a time when unmarried mothers were encouraged to give their ‘illegitimate’ babies up for adoption and to ‘mend their ways’; a time when contraception was unavailable and abortion unmentionable.

Cherish All The Children explores how Cherish was responsible for changing the law on illegitimacy and the abolition of that term, and for successfully campaigning for the introduction of a Single Parent’s Allowance.

The documentary was first broadcast on Today FM on Sunday 29 December 2013 at 9am. You can listen to it online here.

Contributors:

  • Mary Robinson: first President of Cherish
  • Maura O’Dea Richards, Margaret Murphy, Evelyn Forde, Annette Hunter Evans: founder members of Cherish
  • Nuala Feric and Anna Lee: first staff members of Cherish
  • Minister Frances Fitzgerald
  • Fintan O’Toole: Irish Times journalist and social commentator
  • Karen Kiernan, CEO One Family (formerly Cherish)
  • Stuart Duffin, Director Policy & Programmes One Family (formerly Cherish)

Credits:

  • Producer/ Presenter: Hilary Fennell
  • Editor: Daragh Dukes
  • Funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the Television Licence Fee

Time for Constitutional Review of the Family

“The Constitution that governs our country was published back in 1937 and Irish family and social life has changed radically since then. Unfortunately the Constitution has not changed in tandem with this and is now woefully out-of-step with the reality of life for many children and families in Ireland because it doesn’t recognise them as families,” writes One Family’s CEO Karen Kiernan in today’s TheJournal.ie.

Karen discusses All Families Matter, the campaigning coalition calling for a review of the Family in our Constitution, and outlines the reasons a Constitutional review of the family is needed.  Anyone can make an online submission to the Convention this week. Members of the Convention will decide by online poll within the next week what new areas they will look at in February at their final scheduled meeting. It is still possible to lobby political members, make online submissions or attend the last regional meeting today, Wednesday 27 November,  in Limerick to ask them to review the family.

Read the column in TheJournal.ie here.

Click here to find out more about All Families Matter and how to make an online submission.

Listen to a One Family radio documentary

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.

 

 

                                                                                                     

 

 

 

 

Listen to One Family on Pat Kenny 15th October

To mark our 40th Anniversary, Maura O’Dea Richards, the founder of Cherish, and Karen Kiernan, the current Director of One Family, were on Pat Kenny this morning – they are on at 34 minutes into the show.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/

Press the green play button

One Family Director Karen Kiernan amongst nominees to serve on Government’s Constitutional Convention

A full list of experts nominated by civil society groups to serve on the Government’s Constitutional Convention has been published – including One Family Director, Karen Kiernan http://www.iccl.ie/news/2012/08/16/expert-nominations-to-constitutional-convention-revealed.html

Part-time requirement to work being seriously considered by Minister Burton

Part-time requirement to work being seriously considered by Minister Burton – announcement at the launch of our Annual Review 2011 and graduation today. Following a critique of recent cuts aimed at lone parents and recommendations from One Family, the Minister has undertaken to review how lone parents will be moved onto Job Seeker’s Allowance when their youngest child is 7. This is a positive and necessary move as it is completely unreasonable to expect lone parents to be available for full time work.

One Family Director Karen Kiernan on RTE with Joan Burton

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

 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!

Minister Burton responds to Ciara Conway TD re One Family queries

Ciara Conway T.D. has kindly given us permission to share the following information. Following our meeting with Ciara and our two page budget analysis, she raised several issues about the budget cuts with Minister Burton. Minister Burton’s letter of response is enclosed here and this is One Family Director Karen Kiernan’s response to Ciara Conway:

Dear Ciara,

Many thanks for corresponding with Minister Burton on our behalf. Whilst the letter provides factual information and some of it is drawn from the letter that will shortly go to parents in relation to the One-Parent Family Payment unfortunately it is still not clear what the Department’s strategy is in this area, what policy and research this was based on and how they will ameliorate the poor education levels of parents, the lack of employment and the absolute dearth of afterschool care.

Regrettably it has become clear to me that these cuts were made without reference to policy or research but were simply a means of cutting the budget without touching the principal rates of social welfare payments. What is even more unfortunate is that so many of these cuts have fallen on the shoulders of the poorest families and children in Ireland. One Family and our members will continue to speak and advocate on these issues and we appreciate your assistance to date and we look forward to working with you in the future.

Best wishes, Karen

Update on our campaign to reverse budget cuts

Here is any update on what we’ve been doing – we have lobbied every TD and senator by phone or email and have managed to get meetings with Labour and FG politicians today to try and get changes to the proposed cuts. Senators are also raising questions for us today. We have also emailed thousands of supporters and other organisations asking for support to reverse some of the cuts. We are constantly in touch with Dept of Social Protection seeking clarification on dates and phasing in times. We can respond to any individual queries if anyone wants to call our helpline 1890622122. One Family is joining a protest tomorrow being organised by a group of enterprising lone parents and we encourage everyone to join us to show your support. 2-5pm outside the Dail Friday 9 Dec http://www.facebook.com/OneFamilyIreland#!/events/129422247170088/