The Specialist Palliative Care Service based at the Priscilla Bacon Lodge is seeking a Healthcare Chaplain to cover annual leave and/or absence. The Chaplain will work within Priscilla Bacon Lodge and across other in-patient sites, being prepared to work with patients, their relatives and friends, and staff and students, whatever their cultural and faith tradition, for the purpose of pastoral, spiritual and religious care.
The Chaplain will have to work independently, so chaplaincy experience is essential as they will be supporting the delivery of a high quality, safe and compassionate healthcare service. All staff are expected to act as a role model to others in all aspects of their work and consistently demonstrate the organisational values that support and encourage an inclusive culture.
Please note, the selection processes at East of England Community Health and Care NHS Trust are in place to ensure we recruit candidates with the right values and skills, please be advised that the use of AI in applications are monitored. We remain watchful of candidates who misuse these tools to generate an application that doesn’t accurately reflect their skills.
- To visit patients that have been referred to the Chaplaincy and to be open to encountering others who wish to see a Chaplain (whether patients, staff or relatives) throughout the health care trust.
- To be a highly skilled listener and communicator able to:
- Engage with a wide range of people, sometimes with very little background preparation
- Assess needs that are both obvious and hidden and judge appropriate levels of response
- Respond flexibly to unpredictable situations
- Conduct pastoral conversations in all environments, including those over which the Chaplain has very little control
- Conduct pastoral conversations in situations that may be highly charged and stressful
- Establish and maintain relationships in pastorally challenging and potentially hostile environments.
- To share in responsibility for the Chaplaincy with the Lead Chaplain.
- To respond as part of the Chaplaincy team to any major incident
- To use knowledge of own and other faith traditions to minister effectively within and beyond those boundaries
- Facilitate Religious Care
- To ensure rites and rituals and other religious needs that are congruent with patients and staff are facilitated.
- Administer rites, if appropriate, within the post holder’s faith or belief group.
- Provide the highest quality provisions to ensure the needs of members of all faith communities are met appropriately.
- Establish and maintain effective links with faith and belief groups to help support those patients whose needs cannot be met by the department and refer with their consent.
- Facilitate the delivery of memorial events, other Trust annual calendar events and ensure the provision of faith and belief rites.
- To be a creative and intuitive practitioner able to initiate and develop new strategies of staff/patient care as opportunities arise, and in conjunction with the Lead Chaplain.
