The 4th Corner Youth Café (Limerick city) ‘An exploration of staff and volunteers’ construction of their practice ’

Background to the Study: This study took place as part of a Community Academic Research Links (CARL) project within University College Cork (UCC). Limerick Youth Service (LYS) opted to use the CARL process as they wished to research practice within the 4th Corner Youth Café, which had not been previously done. The Youth Café Model is a relatively new concept in Irish youth work, but has now emerged as the main means of providing universal youth work as an aspect of practice (Kiely 2009). It was deemed necessary therefore, to understand how practice in the 4th Corner Café is impacted by having to work within the café model in a disadvantaged area. The other main factors of interest were the staff and volunteer roles, and how current policy is also impacting on the practice. Thus it was felt that the participatory nature of CARL would support them to directly work with their staff and volunteers in a research process to see how they construct their practice. Objectives: The aim of the research is to get a deeper understanding of the practice within the 4th Youth Corner Youth Café. The following are the objectives that were decided on for this study: -To gain a further understanding of the Youth Café Model in a disadvantaged community and how this guides practice. -To interpret the roles of staff and volunteers at the 4th Corner Youth Café. -To investigate the impact of current policy on practice in the 4th Corner Youth Café