With a reputation for delicious home cooked food, with a creative and ever changing ‘Specials’ menu, Park View has become a popular lunch venue with one regular customer recently commenting  

"My friend and I recently enjoyed a delicious lunch at the café at St. Luke’s Church, Canton. We were impressed both by the menu and the service offered…we wish to congratulate you on the excellent encouragement and opportunity for development that you are offering to disabled persons."

Park View incorporates a large indoor seating area as well as an outdoor terrace used in the summer months. Ingredients are primarily sourced locally as well as by our own organic farm project ‘Field Days Organic’ in the Vale of Glamorgan. There is always a good range of hot meals available including tasty vegetarian options.

Park View was set up with European Social Funding and has recently received further support from the Big Lottery for its development into a sustainable social enterprise.

Training Opportunities
Park View is a busy café, with a continual stream of customers throughout the day, that peaks over the lunch period. In this sense it offers an ideal work experience scenario for people who are approaching the stage of applying for paid employment positions in the open labour market. The café has a good reputation to maintain which requires confident and skilled people to operate.

Vocational skills can be honed at the café, and abilities around customer care, food hygiene and preparation, responding to orders and strong team working skills are further developed and tested in this real work environment.

Each trainee is appointed a mentor who works with them to design a bespoke personal development plan incorporating their identified training needs and career aspirations. Training placements are flexible but are designed to be time limited with a clearly identified progression route. This process is supported so that, post- training, the mentor will support the client into the next stage of their development, whether this be Supported Employment, Volunteering or Further Education. Our placements aim to be holistic in their approach with mentors also assisting individuals to overcome other obstacles that they face in accessing employment (for example transport issues/domestic arrangements/benefit advice).

Like our other placements, trainees have the opportunity to receive accreditation for the training they have undertaken to achieve recognised qualifications, through our OCN scheme, and also our partnership with Barry College.