Mr. Paul O'Donnell:

I will speak about social enterprise at Churchfield Community Trust and about the garden café which is widely regarded as Cork's greenest café. It is situated on the grounds of Cork Foyer in Blackpool and located in a beautiful Victorian glasshouse which is open to the public Monday to Friday each week, 12 months a year, providing morning coffee, freshly baked scones and home baking. An exciting lunch menu is on offer daily using the finest seasonal produce sourced from our community allotment and local producers. It is important to note that this is a non-profit initiative. The social enterprise came about because of a difficulty in sourcing work experience and employment opportunities when the economic downturn was at its peak. Funding has been sourced from a number of organisations to which we are grateful, including the statutory and non-statutory funders which are shown on page 9 of the document. A full detailed breakdown is given on page 10 and a further breakdown is available on request.

At first glance, our café aspires to the highest standards of many other restaurants. However, there is a wider picture which focuses on the promotion of social reintegration through formal and informal training in several contexts. Participants receive experiential on-site training, while also receiving formal training in electronic point of sale training, food hygiene which is HACCP certified, food preparation, customer service and communication skills and basic bookkeeping skills. Our staff team comprises a team leader who is employed through the JobsPlus initiative of the Department of Social Protection and two part-time staff members sourced from the local community. We have one JobBridge intern who has completed her nine-month placement and one part-time jobs incentive scheme staff member working up to 23 hours per week. A staff member who was formerly participating in a community employment initiative works on a casual basis and we have two community employment scheme special category substance misuse support placements. We also have one community service placement who works the complete hours in co-operation with us and the Probation Service.

The continued development of the garden café initiative is, in no small way, attributable to a partnership approach involving the Churchfield Community Trust, Cork City Council which provides the garden café glasshouse under a licence agreement, the Department of Social Protection initiatives, the Cork City Education and Training Board, local businesses which provide experiential training and other businesses which provide sponsorship for the new website we recently developed. The continuing success of the initiative can be attributed to the unique community spirit and goodwill in Blackpool which is in the heart of Cork city. It is essentially about bringing out the best in people and helping them to realise their true potential.

I draw the committee's attention to our successful record in terms of progression to further training and employment, including the full-time employment of a team leader, a catering assistant who has now gained employment in a nursing home, a former trainee who is now training as a chef at Cork Institute of Technology and a catering assistant who is now completing a catering course at Cork College of Commerce.

We have facilitated temporary release from Loughan House of somebody who is interested in catering. We also facilitate work placements on requests.

I would also like to speak about new initiatives. At our workshop which is based at Churchfield, a range of bespoke early-era furniture and garden products are currently being developed by our workshop manager and team. The craftsmanship is of an extremely high standard. We would also draw attention to the co-operation with local businesses, such as Akzo Nobel, where we received a contract for Bloom, which involved the assembly and painting in an assortment of colours of picnic tables and also the designing, construction and finishing of garden benches, which took place in June of this year.

The committee may be interested to know the following about our outreach initiative. Over a period of time, it became evident that there was an emerging need locally to give support to persons in the areas of substance misuse and offending behaviour. This cohort could not access community employment or, indeed, our garden café initiative due to limited availability of places. I would refer the committee to the briefing document which depicts a list of issues and challenges that need addressing for clients in our outreach category. These include accommodation, addiction, mental health, methadone involvement, finance and debt, literacy, low self-esteem, difficult life experiences, unemployment and education deficits.

This initiative includes the continuous development of a programme which includes horticulture, stonework and landscaping. It also would include one-to-one key working. This aspect of our service is not fully resourced and ongoing efforts are made to secure sustainable funding.

Networking with external agencies is of vital importance. I acknowledge the support of the HSE through the health action zone through suicide awareness training which would include SafeTALK, Cork Simon, Ables literacy support and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

As an organisation, we remain flexible to new Irish Prison Service sentence management approaches. While engaging with persons in both pre-release and post-release contexts, through a relationship model Churchfield Community Trust facilitates a shift in attitudes, values and beliefs sustained by new social and economic opportunities. Referral sources re potential outreach participants include self-referrals, the Probation Service, the Irish Association for the Social Integration of Offenders through Cork Prison, Portlaoise Prison and the Midlands Prison, IASIO, training and employment officer, the Cork Alliance Centre and addiction services.

We respond to challenges which present through engaging with the person in a respectful way while empowering decision-making through collaborative practice. This process is active, participatory, mutual, respectful and transparent. This places the individual at the centre of the change process rather than programmes or procedures.

Our outreach programme acts as a signposting service for other services, such as addiction services, Money Advice and Budgeting Service, counselling, addiction counselling, the training and employment office I mentioned previously, the alcohol and offending behaviour programme which will be piloted on 27 July, and literacy support in terms of filling out applications and general forms.

In the five-year period between 2008 and 2014 Churchfield Community Trust worked with a total of 168 clients referred through the Probation Service, the Irish Prison Service, IASIO and other agencies. Some 2.49% of clients re-offended while engaging with Churchfield Community Trust. In 2014, 66 persons engaged re support. The breakdown here would include: 13 community employment places, 16 outreach placements, 19 brief interventions, four persons who did not engage, two community service persons who would have completed community service hours, one person who we redirected, one JobBridge intern who I mentioned previously and a part-time job incentive scheme person who I also mentioned previously. I would also mention our nine garden café team. The referral agency statistics for 2014-15 show we had 25 probation referrals, 16 IASIO referrals, seven self-referrals and nine other agency referrals.