Revd Dr Mark Newitt, Secretary for Health and Social Care Chaplaincy
NHS in England, 10 year Plan
As you may well have seen in news, the 10 year plan for the NHS in England was published recently. I encourage you to read it. You can find the policy paper and executive summary here. Key to the plan are the following three shifts:
hospital to community
analogue to digital
sickness to prevention
Words such as religion, spiritual, belief, pastoral are, sadly, not found in the document. However, there is the following statement: “We will expect all care plans to be co-created with patients and cover their holistic needs, not just their treatment.” In relation to staff development, it provides an expectation that “every single member of NHS staff has their own personalised career coaching and development plan, to help them acquire new skills and practice at the top of their professional capability.” Both these points speak to the need for supporting the development of professional chaplaincy.
National Engagement
I attended meetings of national chaplaincy bodies, which included the UK Board of Healthcare Chaplaincy (UKBHC) in my role as a director and the Organising Professional Committee of the College of Health Care Chaplains, where I attend as an observer. Currently, the UKBHC is looking at rebranding and potentially renaming itself to make it clearer that it is the registrar body for healthcare chaplains.
Sarah Crane (UKBHC Chair) and I participated in a meeting with representatives from NHS England. We explored the work of the UKBHC and how it could support the ambitions of the NHS 10-year plan, so that chaplaincy is better understood as a vital part of holistic care and included in the development of Neighbourhood Health Services. Sarah Crane will be holding similar meetings with representatives from the devolved governments, including the Welsh Government, over the coming months.
Muslim Conference
In early July I attend part of an international conference on Muslim Chaplaincy. I presented a paper and helped lead a workshop relating to the delivery of pilot Clinical Pastoral Education units I have been involved in. It was fascinating to see similar questions being wrestled with, at micro and macro levels, such as around balancing faith authorisation and professional registration requirements; around being creative with ritual and liturgical tradition to meet pastoral need; around developing deep listening skills recognising that theological questions are not aways looking for a theological answer; and around how to respond to requests for assisted dying. In relation to the latter, I was intrigued by the phrase ‘heretical piety’ used by one presenter to describe when people are making decisions that they know go against religious rulings/understandings, but, otherwise, maintain their faith practice and belief in God, etc.