Our Vision

We believe that, with support from policy makers, managers and lead clinicians, chaplains and other members of the spiritual healthcare workforce will be able to make a greater contribution to healthcare by providing patients, staff and organisations with modern spiritual healthcare. We envisage that, by 2010, chaplains and their co-workers should be:

• Delivering evidence-based spiritual healthcare for all users needing such care in a patient-centred fashion and to agreed standards within agreed resources;
• Working as members of the healthcare professional workforce in multi-disciplinary teams which reflect the specialty and expertise of the chaplain in a variety of care settings;
• Supporting multi-faith working which respects the validity of all faiths as a pre-requisite for effective chaplaincy and acknowledges that patients and staff can expect all reasonable efforts to be made for them to receive spiritual care appropriate to their beliefs.
• Demonstrating professional standing through education pathways and attainments common to all chaplains and authorised appropriately by faith group mechanisms acceptable to all;
• Contributing to the leadership of healthcare services by effective management of spiritual healthcare and positive support to organisational and corporate objectives whilst also being able to give voice to those whose views do not accord with those of the organisation;
• Building effective and useful links with community groups and with faith groups locally and nationally.

In order to sustain this level of development, we consider that there is a need for additional support to chaplains and to chaplaincies and to their co-workers. Within the body of this report, we suggest that chaplaincies should work together in chaplaincy collaboratives to enable a wider experience and critical mass to inform the way forward locally. We also propose (in chapter five) that Spiritual Healthcare Development Units be formed under the auspices of WDCs/ SHAs to support the change process more generally.

Caring for the Spirit: Page 11 (November 2003)   (754KB)