Hospital News November 2021

As many of you will know, we’re members of the Network for Pastoral, Spiritual and Religious Care in Health. We have two seats on their committee, one taken by our current Hospital Manager, Di Yates, and the other taken by me – Sarah Kerr, PF President.

I attended the most recent meeting of the Network over Zoom on 18th November. As always, they are a great team to work with, whose main aims are to provide the very best in Chaplaincy to anyone in need of it at a healthcare setting.

Our main achievements during that meeting are as follows:

  1. Chaplaincy Guidelines Re-write.  We want to encourage people from many religious and beliefs to contribute to the process, and many of the Network members have asked for their names to be added to a spreadsheet of people to be consulted.


I took part in a small group who created a document that will contribute our viewpoints on the current guidelines to the upcoming review. I have added my name and contact details to the list of people who wish to be consulted during the process of the review.

  • The revision of the Endorsement Guide is in its final stages.  We plan to publish it in early 2022.

    As fairly new members of the Network, our endorsement information was not included in the last revision of the Endorsement Guide. Di and I have written a new section detailing our processes for the endorsement of Pagan Chaplains in Healthcare.

  • The “Exploring Healthcare Chaplaincy” course is going really well, and we already have 36 applicants for the Spring course.  We are reserving the remaining 9 places for applicants from non-Christian religions, as we already have a good number of Christian and non-religious applicants.

    Details of this course are below, and I would encourage anyone who is interested to apply for this round while it is still free. The next round will cost £50 per place.

  • The report of posts advertised again reveals that many more posts are open to a wide range of religions and beliefs – far more so than just a few years ago.  We welcomed this and are encouraged, but not complacent as there is still further to go to ensure that posts are limited only where there is an overriding Genuine Occupational Requirement for such.

    We are pleased to see that many posts are open to people of a wide range of religions and beliefs, we will bring you news of any posts we are told are available as they are posted.

  • Manhar Mehta was re-elected as the treasurer for another 2 years.

    We were happy to support the re-election of Manhar who has been a valuable member of the Network Committee for many years.

If you, or anyone you know, is interested in the Exploring Healthcare Chaplaincy course, the details are available on the Network website here.

Bright blessings,
Sarah Kerr

https://www.network-health.org.uk/index.php/pages/exploring-healthcare-chaplaincy-course

https://www.network-health.org.uk/