One Family calls for urgent reform of family law, housing and child poverty supports

One Family said: 'Most poor children in Ireland live in one-parent families and lone parents experience high levels of in-work poverty.'

The Government must reform family law supports to prevent “adversarial, traumatic court cases”, a charity advocating for one-parent families has said.

Coinciding with International Single Parents Day, One Family launched a new campaign calling for urgent action from the Government to support lone parent families in a number of areas including family law, child poverty, family homelessness and access to education.

“We have achieved huge, positive changes for one-parent families in Ireland since our organisation was founded 54 years ago and that is to be welcomed and acknowledged,” its CEO Karen Kiernan said.

“But we’ve moved from putting lone parents in institutions to placing them in systems which harm them.

“This includes a family law system which doesn’t deliver a child-centred approach, a housing crisis which has created epidemic levels of family homelessness in one-parent families and a ‘work-activation’ approach to lone parents and employment, which fuels high levels of in-work poverty.”

Issues around civil legal aid in the family law setting have been flagged repeatedly in recent years. In a minority report on a Government-commissioned review of the civil legal aid scheme, Free Legal Advice Centres chief executive Eilis Barry said the system was in crisis.

The report said that family law dominates the work of the legal aid board even though clients in this area can often have other legal issues in areas like debt, social welfare and housing, including as a consequence of the original family law matter.

“The Legal Aid Board have a budget for the reports necessary for the fair disposable of any case in which it is providing legal representation including the full cost of ‘section 32’/voice of the child reports and other essential reports in family law and other cases,” the report recommended last year.

One Family said that the Government must act to invest in out-of-court supports in family law cases that would help to address lengthy court waiting times and provide the best outcomes for children.

It said parenting courses, mediation and counselling would help to avoid the kind of traumatic cases that can be seen in the family courts.

“This should include funding for specialised services that support families experiencing high levels of conflict or domestic violence, such as One Family’s Separating Well for Children service, and therapeutic services for children,” it said.

It added that the Government cannot accept monthly increases in the number of children and families who are homeless as “normal”.

Homeless single-parent families

According to the most recent Government statistics, there were 2,555 families in homeless accommodation in Ireland. The number also included 5,319 children. Over half of these families, 1,442 were single-parent families.

Boosting funding for the tenant-in-situ scheme and increasing the rate of Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) in line with market rents would help to alleviate the pressure on families at risk of homelessness, it said.

Linked in with this issue is child poverty.

"Most poor children in Ireland live in one-parent families and lone parents experience high levels of in-work poverty," the charity added. 

"If the government wants to reduce child poverty, they can do this by targeting one-parent families. An efficient way of doing this is by increasing the amount of income excluded for lone parents who receive [certain payments] to €222.75 per week."