New roles available

One Family, Ireland’s national organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating are recruiting for a number of positions including Director of Counselling, Counsellors for the MyOptions unplanned pregnancy  phone line and Key Worker for the New Futures Employability Programme. For more details of these opportunities click here:

New Futures Employability Programme is now recruiting for a Key Worker

One Family’s award winning New Futures Employability Programme is now recruiting for a Key Worker. If you want to work in a great team, supporting, encouraging and mentoring people parenting alone in their journey back to education or work this could be the role for you.

For more details and job description click here or call Niamh Wynne on 01-6629212 or email: nwynne@onefamily.ie

Civil Society organisations call for referendum on care, women and family in the Constitution

Ahead of the Oireachtas debate on the motion to establish a Joint Committee on Gender Equality today (9th November 2021), civil society organisations have welcomed the setting up of this Committee and called on it to implement the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality in full, prioritising a referendum to make the recommended Constitutional changes in relation to non- discrimination (Art. 40), the value of care (Art. 41.2. on ‘woman in the home’) and Article 41.3 on the Constitutional definition of the family.

The recommendations by the Citizens Assembly are ground-breaking and send a strong and clear signal to Government and all decision makers that gender equality needs to be at the centre of our Constitution, our legislation and our policies.

These recommendations come after long campaigns by civil society organisations to reform our constitution to reflect a modern Ireland with the value of equality at its centre.

Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council (NWC) said,

“We welcome and support the establishment of the Committee to discuss how we can best implement the comprehensive recommendations by the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality. In particular, we call on the Committee to prioritise the necessary changes to our Constitution on women, the value of care and care work and on the definition of the family.

In line with the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly, we urgently need to replace the sexist and outdated wording of Art. 41.2 of our Constitution and replace it with wording that recognises the value of care within the home and the wider community.”

Karen Kiernan, One Family said,

“The establishment of this Committee on Gender Equality is very welcome to drive forward the implementation of the wide-ranging recommendations by the Citizens Assembly. The recommendation to recognise all forms of families in our Constitution, not only families based on marriage, will finally recognise the diversity of family life in Ireland and particularly provide status and recognition to one parent families.”

Organisations supporting this call include the National Women’s Council (NWC), One Family, Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL), Children’s Rights Alliance, Treoir, Family Carers Ireland and Care Alliance Ireland.

Ends/

For more information, please contact Silke Paasche, Head of Communications, NWC, Tel. 085 858 9104.

Notes to Editor:

Full report on the recommendation of the Citizens Assembly

Recommendations in relation to the Constitution are:

Insert a new clause into Article 40 to refer explicitly to gender equality and non-discrimination.
Delete and replace the text of Article 41.2 (woman in the home) with language that is not gender specific and obliges the State to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and wider community.
Amend Article 41 so that it would protect private and family life, with the protection afforded to the family not limited to the marital family.

Single Parents Day

Tomorrow March 21 is #SingleParentsDay

This year, One Family is joining with Gingerbread, One Parent Families Scotland and Parenting NI to celebrate one-parent families across social media.

We’d love your help in spreading the word and sharing the message that single parents are valued and invaluable.
Single parent families make up 25% of all families in Ireland but sadly we hear from parents that stigma and judgemental attitudes around one parent families is still an issue.

This is why we’re excited to use Single Parents Day 2020 as a chance to turn that message around and tell people about the amazing achievements that single parents accomplish for themselves and their families every day.

If you’d like to get involved, you can:
• Share this information with your networks.
• Use the #CelebrateSingleParents and #SingleParentsDay hashtags.
• Follow @OPFS, @Gingerbread, @parentingNI and @1familyireland, and keep an eye on the hashtags on the day so you can join the conversation and help raise the profile of single parents and #SingleParentsDay.

One Parent Families Scotland have developed some great resources to take part: https://bit.ly/3a8ssbM

One Family and Covid-19