When it comes to minor scrapes and falls, some children brush them off easily. Other children stop and seek sympathy with every scratch and scrape. Children can often seek sympathy for attention. Most parents, no matter how busy they are, will stop whatever they are doing when a child cries out from an injury. Children learn very early that crying gets attention. Another reason for tears after falls is that children enjoy the kindness of the care they receive: the nursing from a parent, the kiss and hug, the plasters. Most children see plasters as the crowning glory for their cut[...]

One Family acts as a stakeholder within the Families and Societies project which aims to investigate the diversity of family forms and relationships in Europe, to assess the compatibility of existing policies with family changes, and to contribute to evidence-based policy-making. The final conference of the project was held last month in Brussels. It aimed to provide an overview of the main achievements of the project since it began in February 2013. Representatives of the European Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, and forty stakeholder organisations attended. Rea Lavelle, our Social Policy Analyst, attended for One Family. The topic of children’s life chances was addressed[...]

Many children I know have advent calendars. They are in many shops ranging in price from one euro to about four euro. Children love the chocolate, perhaps eating it for breakfast every day in December, wild with the excitement of Santa. A parent in our Facebook parenting group came up with a great idea for an alternative Advent calendar. For each day of the Advent calendar, your child and everyone in the house has to do a kind act or deed. This means that everyone has to do 24 kind deeds before Christmas Day. It will support your children, and everyone in[...]

The Department of Social Protection agreed to review the changes to the One Parent Family Payment (OFP) at Committee stage of the Social Welfare Bill 2016 on Thursday 17 November. It is essential that review of the OFP reform be carried out urgently, as One Family has consistently called for. A cohesive report on the potential outcomes should have been conducted prior to implementation which could have avoided the negative impacts experienced by a large number of lone parents in part-time work. Family Income Supplement (FIS) will also be reviewed; a new proposed Working Family Payment was included in the Programme for Government last May. The analysis of the State’s child poverty rates is immediately necessary.[...]

Press Release On Universal Children’s Day we ask: What is being done to lift Ireland’s poorest children out of poverty? (Dublin, Friday 18 November 2016) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting, and separating – celebrates UN Universal Children’s Day this Sunday, 20 of November 2016, while voicing concern on the inequality that exists in Irish society for the thousands of children living in those one-parent families which suffer the highest rates of deprivation in Ireland today. On Universal Children’s Day we must, as a society, speak for them, acknowledge them, and act for them. One in nine (11%) children live[...]