http://hdl.handle.net/10468/524 2013-05-22T04:20:38Z 2013-05-22T04:20:38Z Swirak, Katharina http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1107 2013-05-08T02:00:12Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

A post-structuralist analysis of Irish youth crime prevention policy with specific emphasis on the Garda youth diversion projects Swirak, Katharina Garda Youth Diversion Projects (GYDPs) have since their beginnings in the early 1990s gained an increasingly important role and now constitute a central feature of Irish youth justice provision. Managed by the Irish Youth Justice Service and implemented by the Gardai and a variety of youth work organisations as well as independent community organisations, GYDPs are located at the crossroads of welfarist and corporatist approaches to youth justice, combining diversionary and preventative aspects in their work. To date, these projects have been subjected to very little systematic analysis and they have thus largely escaped critical scrutiny. To address this gap, this thesis locates the analysis of GYDP policy and practice within a post-structuralist theoretical framework and deploys discourse analysis primarily based on the work of Michel Foucault. It makes visible the official youth crime prevention and GYDP policy discourses and identifies how official discourses relating to youth crime prevention, young people and their offending behaviour, are drawn upon, negotiated, rejected or re-contextualised by project workers and JLOs. It also lays bare how project workers and JLOs draw upon a variety of other discourses, resulting in multi-layered, complex and sometimes contradictory constructions of young people, their offending behaviour and corresponding interventions. At a time when the projects are undergoing significant changes in terms of their repositioning to operate as the support infrastructure underpinning the statutory Garda Youth Diversion Programme, the thesis traces the discursive shifts and the implications for practice that are occurring as the projects move away from a youth work orientation towards a youth justice orientation. A key contribution of this thesis is the insight it provides into how young people and their families are being constituted in individualising and sometimes pathologising ways in GYDP discourses and practices. It reveals the part played by the GYDP intervention in favouring individual and narrow familial causes of offending behaviour while broader societal contexts are sidelined. By explicating the very assumptions upon which contemporary youth crime prevention policy, as well as GYDP policy and practice are based, this thesis offers a counterpoint to the prevailing evidence-based agenda of much research in the field of Irish youth justice theory and youth studies more generally. Rather, it encourages the reader to take a step back and examine some of the most fundamental and unquestioned assumptions about the construction of young people, their offending behaviour and ways of addressing this, in contemporary Irish youth crime prevention policy and practice.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Burns, Kenneth Christie, Alastair http://hdl.handle.net/10468/862 2013-02-18T09:09:16Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention Burns, Kenneth; Christie, Alastair This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Weafer, John A. http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1108 2013-05-16T08:49:25Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

The lived experience of Irish diocesan priests. A qualitative study of clerical identity, obedience and celibacy. Weafer, John A. The main aim of this thesis is to document and explore the lived experience of Irish diocesan priests and former priests, in order to explore the reality of diocesan priesthood in contemporary Ireland, and to investigate how, if at all, diocesan priesthood has changed in Ireland during the past fifty years. It sought to do this by interrogating the stories of thirty-three diocesan priests and former priests, and by placing their individual stories within the broader context of Irish society and the Catholic Church, during the fifty-year period, 1962–2012. The research focused on three core areas of priesthood – identity, obedience, and celibacy – and it addressed the following questions. First, how do Irish diocesan priests understand their priesthood and how has this understanding changed over time, if at all? I will argue that three paradigms of priesthood co-exist in the contemporary Irish Church, and that each of these models corresponds with a distinct period in contemporary Irish Church history. I will also demonstrate the existence of underlying similarities in the cultural practice of priesthood that transcend the different generations of priests. Second, how do Irish diocesan priests negotiate their priesthood within a large and complex institution? My study suggests that Irish diocesan priests are typically loyal and obedient. However, they are not necessarily subservient. Third, how do Irish diocesan priests understand and experience celibacy in their day-to-day lives? My study demonstrates that celibacy is typically understood and experienced along a continuum, ranging from total acceptance to total rejection, with most priests somewhere in between. Fourth, I will argue that while priests are experiencing many difficulties in their lives, there is insufficient evidence from the present study to indicate they are experiencing a crisis.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Bates, Catherine Burns, Kenneth http://hdl.handle.net/10468/1071 2013-04-22T08:04:43Z 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z

Community-engaged student research: online resources, real world impact Bates, Catherine; Burns, Kenneth Marcus-Quinn, Ann; Bruen, Catherine; Allen, Miriam; Dundon, Aisling; Diggins, Yvonne The global economic crisis, the cost of socialising enormous bank debts and exchequer fiscal ‘corrections’ in the Irish economy (see Kirby and Murphy 2011), have sharpened recent debates on the role and functions of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in society. Key debates have centred on public sector pay and performance, and the contribution HEIs should make in building the knowledge economy and driving Ireland’s economic growth. However, HEIs also have a significant part to play in civil society. HEIs are often criticised for primarily serving the elites, the powerful and the economically privileged sections of society; but all citizens, groups and organisations should have a right to participate in HEI activities, and be facilitated to share their mutual knowledge and expertise, and to collaborate on the creation of new knowledge. Civil society organisations (CSOs) can become engaged in higher education, particularly in the research activities of HEIs, through the process of community-based research (CBR), often facilitated through a knowledge exchange or community liaison office. Civil society organisations include: voluntary and community organisations, residents’ groups, non-profit organisations, associations, pressure and faith groups, and trade unions. CBR - also known in Europe as “Science Shop”, from a Dutch phrase meaning “knowledge workshop” - involves students and/or academic staff collaborating with community partners to address local and/or societal research questions identified by CSOs. In this chapter, we argue that the bottom up CBR approach, facilitated by the use of on-line resources, enhances the ability of HEIs to meet their civic engagement obligations contained in the National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030 (Hunt 2011). CBR also makes HEIs more responsive to society, enhances student researchers’ knowledge, skills and competencies, and contributes to community development. This chapter begins by introducing community-based research and its development on the Island of Ireland. We then outline and evaluate our experiences of using online resources in similar ways in two HEIs – Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and University College Cork (UCC) - to facilitate student recruitment to CBR projects, as well as supporting the involvement of community partners and academic supervisors. This is very much a discussion paper based on evolving work practices, rather than a definitive evaluation of a finalised product. Throughout the chapter we argue for HEIs using such digital resources as a way to promote and facilitate staff and student involvement in civically engaged research. We will conclude the paper with a brief discussion of our publication of completed CBR reports on our websites, in light of the open access to research movement.

2012-11-01T00:00:00Z