One more cut and we’re gone, says lone-parent group

IN various forms the Parents Alone Support Services (PASS) community development project has been assisting lone parents in the Finglas area of north Dublin since 1994.

Run on an annual budget of about €120,000 the project employs two part-time and one full-time community workers, dealing with over 500 inquiries a year, of which around 10% become long-term cases.

PASS is a “targeted” community development project (CDP) aimed at a particular category of people, lone parents, rather than an area. Project worker John O’Neill said: “We advocate on the clients’ behalf with bodies such as the local authority on housing, HSE on rent allowance etc.

“We also help people that are going through the family courts looking for maintenance payments and other issues. In an area like Finglas, all social workers’ time is taken up on crisis cases, they also cannot have the advocacy role in representing the interests of lone parents in this area as a group.” Established in 1994, PASS was initially part of a state-funded but Catholic Church-administered project.

Around 2000 the project was turned into a community employment scheme run by Fás which saw an increase in staff, most of them lone parents training for a return to the workforce.

In 2004, following cutbacks in the Fás community employment schemes, PASS became a CDP, funded by the department.

The PASS board of management is made up of lone parents from the Finglas area. According to the Government-directed plan this board of management will hand over control to the Tolka Area Partnership, which covers mainly the Finglas and Cabra areas, in 2011.

A cutback in PASS’s 2010 budget has seen the part-time staff go on a three-day week and O’Neill’s full-time position go to four days a week.

“One more cut and we’re gone. Our budget is to the bone, we literally don’t buy stationery, we have our wages, our rent and electricity bill and that is it,” O’Neill said.

“I believe the partnership is involved in a very different area of work than the CDPs. The partnership’s idea of the community expands to local companies, Gardaí etc, they’re specifically established to implement government policy.

“In the CDPs we have a different focus of empowering marginalised communities and respond to local needs.”