Family Groups in England & Wales Agree the Way Forward

Our Lady of Victories' newly refurbished parish hall was the setting for our gathering in Kensington on Saturday 17th May. Project Office staff and a Family Groups team from St Mary's Ipswich were warmly welcomed by Mgr James Curry and Parish Coordinator Glenda Clarke gave an inspiring presentation on the Kensington Family Groups' 5+ year history. Saturday's meeting was the culmination of a 10 month consultation with Family Groups in England & Wales, commissioned by Bishop John Hine. Eight of the ten active Family Group parishes participated in the consultation via a questionnaire, an October 2013 meeting in Leeds and Saturday's gathering. Family Group teams from St Michael's and St Bernadette's Whitefield, Holy Rosary Aintree, and St Bernadette's Scunthorpe attended the Leeds' meeting, along with Fr Pat Munroe and Marriage & Family Life Coordinators from Clifton, Leeds, Shrewsbury and Wrexham dioceses.

The consultation has produced three agreed priorities for Family Groups in England and Wales:

•  to create a national network of Family Groups in England & Wales
• to create a sustainable 'grass roots' support structure for Family Groups in England & Wales
• to support the development of new Family Group parishes from within the English & Welsh network

A Steering Group, comprising a nominee from each Family Group parish and MFL diocesan representation, will be convened to drive these initiatives forward. The Project Office will support the Family Groups to establish these structures in the initial stages.

If you have any questions about Family Groups in England & Wales please contact Hannah Moruzzi at the MFL Project Office

Inspiration from St Michael's and St Bernadette's

The Family Groups in St Michael's and St Bernadette's Parish, Whitefield, will celebrate their seventh birthday this year. Their Group Leaders understand the energy and creativity that is needed to develop the groups' identities and to keep members of all ages engaged and involved. Here are a few ideas given to us by the Rafiki Family Group:


Members' Birthdays 
Compile a list of group members' birthdays so that everyone receives a card from the group on their birthday. You will need one person from the group to take responsibility for making/buying & sending the cards but everyone can chip in to cover the cost.

House Mass:
These are very special occasions for Family Groups as you can see from the short clip of a house Mass hosted by the Rafiki group last year. Talk to your Parish Priest about this and get a team of volunteers to help with the organisation.

Italian Get-Together
Have an Italian meal with group members bringing contributions of food (meatballs, lasagne, bolognese, garlic bread etc).  Perhaps bring along some nice desserts and some Italian wine or beer too.  As well as chefs to cook the pasta, you'll need someone to coordinate the music or to arrange song sheets and music for a sing along. The venue could be your local social centre or parish hall and, if they liked, group members could come wearing red, white and green.

Secret Santa
At your penultimate meeting of the year put all the names in a hat and ask everyone to pull out the name of someone for whom they will buy a Christmas gift. Limit the cost of the gift to £1 maximum.  At your Christmas meeting bring your gifts wrapped with a gift-tag marked with the person’s name and hand them out from Santa's sack during the meeting. Each family could also bring a Christmas card with a message and greeting inside from their family.  These could be distributed during the meeting so that every family takes a card home from someone in the group.

Example of a Rafiki Family Group newsletter and annual programme of events 

If your parish has any great ideas for Family Groups or details of upcoming events, reports or pictures that you would like to share on this Blog please contact the MFL Project Office