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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 20 Feb 2003

Vol. 561 No. 6

Written Answers - Family Support Services.

Breeda Moynihan-Cronin

Question:

39 Ms B. Moynihan-Cronin asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the purpose and objectives of the proposed forum on the family announced by her in December 2002; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4830/03]

Paul Nicholas Gogarty

Question:

57 Mr. Gogarty asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if she will report on the establishment and hoped for effect of the recently announced forum on the family. [4929/03]

I propose to take Questions Nos. 39 and 57 together.

My Department has very significant responsibilities in the provision of a range of support programmes for families. These include child benefit, one-parent family benefit, payments for families who are out of work through illness or unemployment, family income supplement and the carer's schemes. The primary objective of these schemes is to provide income support to assist families in caring for their members, especially children and elderly persons.

The Government-led "families first" approach in recent years has also involved the development in my Department of a range of new initiatives to address the effects of separation and divorce on families, to prevent marital breakdown, where possible, and to put in place a range of supports to assist families dealing with crises or major upheaval in their lives. I will shortly establish the family support agency to further strengthen the institutional framework for the development of effective and responsive family support services. The purpose of the planned fora is to provide me with the opportunity to hear the views of representative family members, especially parents, and representatives of those that work with them, including public representatives, about the challenges they are currently facing. I wish to hear how effective the services Government and the community and voluntary sectors are in helping them meet these challenges and in strengthening family well being. I will also wish to discuss how these services can be further developed and improved.

The outcome of this public consultation, together with the research evidence being compiled at both national and international levels, will be pivotal resources for the preparations already in train for the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the United Nations International Year of the Family in 2004, which are being co-ordinated by my Department.

One of my main priorities, as Minister with responsibility for family affairs, is to ensure that policy on families, which form the fundamental units in our society, receives the level of attention commensurate with the importance of families for all our well being. I want to hear at first hand what a representative group of family members in various locations throughout the country, and those who work with them, consider is required in further policy development. I am very much looking forward to participating in this consultation process and intend to hold the first in the series of public consultative fora in the late spring.
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