Fréa Renewing Roots have been supporting former residents of the Republic of Ireland’s Mother and Baby and County Homes, as well as other institutions, who are now living in the north of England, since 2022.
We have been providing free, confidential and trauma informed support on inquiries, such as accessing the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme, obtaining records held by institutions and accessing counselling.
In October 2023 we expanded our team to welcome Natalie Hughes-Crean and Ciaran Connolly to augment the work that we were already undertaking. This allowed Fréa Renewing Roots to support more people and diversify our work.
At heart of this work is people. It is about people who were exploited, incarcerated, who were silenced and ignored. It is about empowering people and engaging with them on an individual and community level.
Fréa Renewing Roots has three central aims, to advise, to advocate and to publicise.
This is the second of three posts reviewing our work over the previous 12 months.
An important part of the work that Fréa Renewing Roots do is to advocate on behalf of former residents and family members of Mother and Baby and County Homes. In order to achieve this, Fréa Renewing Roots staff have developed an in-depth insight into the different rules that goes into making up the Irish Governments Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions.
The most well-known part of that action plan is the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme, which opened for applications in March 2024. In our role, we use both our experience as well as feedback from former residents and their family members to represent their concerns to the different organisations.
One of these concerns is that people who receive payments from the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme may have their Means Tested Benefits affected. We have worked with our colleagues at Coventry Irish Society, the London Irish Centre and Irish in Britain to raise this issue with both the British and Irish Governments. We are continuing our lobbying to try to ensure that people who were incarcerated in the Republic of Ireland’s Mother and Baby or County Homes and are in receipt of means-tested benefits are unaffected if they receive a payment.
This follows up our work raising this issue when we addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education Research, Innovation and Science in October 2023. At this committee, we raised the potential impact on benefits of the proposed €3,000 Health Support Payment outlined in the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill (a video and transcript of this can be seen here - Oireachtas Committee)
We have been also working with both the Department of Children, Equalities, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Relate Care (who administer the application process) to make the application process more straightforward for people living outside the Republic of Ireland. We know from our work that many former residents do not have either of the two forms of photo identification deemed necessary for Payment Scheme applicants living outside the state (up-to-date passports and driving licences). Obtaining these documents would result in extra cost for applicants, as well additional complication and delays. Working alongside the DCEDIY, it was agreed that identification requirements could be reviewed to reflect the situation of people living outside the Republic of Ireland.
We have also been busy engaging with Patricia Carey, Special Advocate for Survivors of Institutional Abuse, and her team. Patricia’s role involves consulting former residents of institutions and representing their concerns to the Irish Government. In March 2024, Patricia met with former residents their family members from across the north of England as well as Fréa Renewing Roots staff England at Manchester’s Irish World Heritage Centre. This event gave an insight into the experiences of people who were incarcerated in Ireland’s Mother and Baby institutions and who left the state.
When the Special Advocate asked former residents for their thoughts on what should go into the upcoming National Centre for Research and Remembrance, we were able to ring people who have engaged in our service so that their views could be fed back to the Centre’s steering group. This consultation ensured that people who could not attend the initial event in Dublin were nevertheless able to contribute to the development of the centre.
We were also able to ask the former residents we have supported about their experience of submitting online applications to the Payment Scheme. The responses to these surveys were returned to the DCEDIY to ensure they were aware of the experiences of people who had submitted these applications.
We also want our service to be shaped by the views of former residents so that we can improve. In January 2024, Fréa Renewing Roots staff met with former residents of institutions to discuss our name and the language that we use, including what they would consider appropriate terminology. We are always willing to listen to feedback and adopt ideas from people so that we can better represent those who come to us for support.
We will continue to represent the needs of former residents, living in the north of England over the coming twelve months – ensuring that their needs are represented.
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Meet the team and get in touch here: https://www.frea.org.uk/motherandbabyhomestaff
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