The support we can see, and the part we cannot
This month One Family, The Separation Network and the What Works initiative opened a national survey asking parents and teachers how primary schools can better support children through separation and family change. It is a welcome question, and a timely one.
There is a quieter part it points to. A school can only meet a child where the information reaches it. When two homes are not looking at the same week, the school sees fragments: a kit that did not travel, a form that went to one parent, a concert booked twice or not at all.
Give the school one version of the week
Agree who the school holds as the main contact, and keep term dates, the collection rota and any changes somewhere both parents can see. The child then arrives with the kit, not the message.
It is a small habit that takes the child out of the middle. They get to be a pupil on a Tuesday, not the courier between two houses.
A child should never be the messenger between their two homes.When the week is written down where both parents can see it, the not-knowing has less room to grow.
Same page, calmer week
As Ireland builds better support around children of separation, the ordinary coordination between two homes is part of that picture, not a footnote to it. It is often what decides whether a Tuesday feels steady.
ParenThing gives separated parents one shared, private place to hold the calendar, the handovers and the messages, so the week is something a child can lean on.
Start free at parenthing.ieSources
- One Family, The Separation Network and What Works (Department of Children, Disability and Equality), New national survey to help schools support parental separation and family change, 6 July 2026. https://onefamily.ie/new-national-survey/
- Newstalk, The Hard Shoulder, New national survey to help schools support parental separation and family change, 7 July 2026. https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-hard-shoulder/new-national-survey-to-help-schools-support-parental-separation-family-change
- One Family, one in four families with children in Ireland is a one-parent family (survey press release), 2026. https://onefamily.ie/new-national-survey/