One Family
Ireland’s national organisation for one-parent families is recruiting a Fixed Term (March - December 2025), 

Part Time Family Support Worker

One Family is Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting, or separating. We provide support, information, and specialist family support services to all members of all one-parent families, as well as to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families. One Family’s vision is that every family in Ireland will be cherished equally, and will enjoy the social, financial, and legal equality to create their own positive future.

Family Support Worker Role:

The Family Support Worker will have a dedicated focus on the needs of children and parents post separation; families who are experiencing high levels of interparental conflict; or families where there is a lived experience of domestic violence alongside court ordered child contact.

Many of the families we work to support have complex needs with experiences of unplanned pregnancy, isolation and loneliness; belong to ethnic minority communities, have the experience of domestic violence, living in homelessness and are parenting alone or sharing parenting with the child’s other parent/legal guardian.

This role sits within our Separating Well for Children (Tusla Funded) Project, within our |Parenting Team. The key focus will be working alongside the Practice Manager | Parenting Team to review incoming referrals, assess the needs of families and create and implement plans for short term and longer-term interventions. The person is required to create opportunities for parents to engage in a suite of psychoeducational supports, while promoting family and individual resilience by helping families develop strategies to manage and deescalate interparental conflict and find ways to ensure best outcomes for children post separation. It is expected the role will collaborate with other agencies to find the right care and support for families in specialist areas such as child safeguarding, domestic violence and mental health and provide support to families at a time when they find themselves struggling to cope.

The role will contribute to ongoing learning and improvement in One Family’s response to one-parent families post separation and increase our opportunities to work alongside other professionals seeking to promote learning and implement best practice models in responding to the needs of separated families.

Read more here about Separating Well for Children https://onefamily.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/SWP_CES-report-Sep-2022_FINALupdated.pdf

Person Specification – the ideal candidate will have:

• Relevant third level qualification Social Care, Early Years, Psychology, Community Work or other relevant qualification and have a minimum of 5 years post qualification experience working with families who have complex needs.
• Experience of delivering group-based programmes both in person and on zoom, both manualised and informal.
• Experience of working one to one directly with children and parents.
• Experience working in an interdisciplinary team.
• Client-focussed perspective.
• Enthusiastic and motivated.
• Strong organisation skills with good attention to detail.
• Knowledge and hands on experience working with people who have the lived experience of being from ethnic minority communities, domestic violence, homelessness, poor mental health, shared parenting, parenting post separation and parenting alone.
• Working knowledge of Children First and Meitheal.
• Working knowledge of the HSE National Consent Policy and how it applies dual consent in child and family settings.
• Excellent IT skills and capacity to engage with Salesforce, process referrals and manage client files.
• Eligibility to be Garda Vetted.

Family Support Worker Responsibilities will include:

• Contribute to the provision of direct supports to parents of one parent families, especially those parenting post separation.
• Support referrals to Separating Well for Children | Parenting Service
• Signpost families to relevant services to ensure parents have opportunities to access information on rights/entitlements.
• Acquire dual consent where appropriate at point of referral, for children moving into 1-1 supports.
• Take direction from the Practice Manager to engage referrers in appropriate interventions in One Family.
• Deliver group-based and one to one support to parents.
• Contribute to ongoing learning and improvement in One Family’s response to one-parent families. This includes working alongside other professionals and engaging with local and national networks to enhance the quality-of-service provision for one parent families.
• Maintain all quality/professional standards and codes of practice.
• Attend relevant internal and external supervisions and trainings.
• Maintain all relevant admin, monitoring and data collection.
• Follow One Family’s policies and procedures.
• Contribute to evaluations, policy, reports, funding applications etc as requested.
• To be line managed by the Director of Parenting & Professional Development and take direction where appropriate on issues relating to clients.
• Maintain the high professional and ethical standard in the provision of care to service users established by the One Family.

Terms & Conditions:

This is a fixed term contract from March to December 2025 working part-time, 14 hours per week in One Family offices, 8 Coke Lane, Smithfield, Dublin 7. Although this is a hybrid role, much of the role will be carried out in person. The full-time salary scale for this role is €37,437.37, supervision and other benefits will be provided. This role is subject to a 6-month probationary period.

One Family provides a range of benefits including:

• Employee Assistance Programme
• Cycle to Work scheme
• 25 days annual leave (pro-rated accordingly for part time staff)
• Two staff privilege days: Christmas Eve & Good Friday
• Hybrid work
• Company laptop

Application Procedure:

A cover letter and Curriculum Vitae addressing how you can fulfil the requirements of this role should be forwarded to gkelly@onefamily.ie by 5pm on Monday February 10th 2025. Interviews are expected to take place soon after.

One Family is an equal opportunity employer.