(no title)

What is the Buddhist Healthcare Chaplaincy Group?

This document is to designed to explain the background and context from which BHCG arose and to outline its role within the whole process of increasing the availability of Buddhist Chaplaincy to patients within the NHS in England and Wales. The relationship with the Multi Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy is a vital element to this situation.

THE ROLE OF THE BUDDHIST CHAPLAIN

Creating a peaceful space for patient to explore spiritual issues: conveying a sense of space; but also allowing and accepting non-peaceful feelings.

• Exploring relationship to death & dying
• Validating patients’ experience including but not exclusively their spiritual experience (acceptance)
• Offering spiritual perspective on illness
• Offering support to people without putting them or oneself into a box; not buying into authority figure image
• Offering support to family
• Advocacy (to health service & to family)
• Grounded in a Buddhist tradition and ethically grounded

THE PURPOSE OF MFGHC

Founded in 2003, the Multi Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy currently includes representatives from nine major world faiths. The object of the MFGHC is the advancement of multi-faith healthcare chaplaincy in England and Wales. The Group seeks to further this object by facilitating a common understanding and support for healthcare chaplaincy amongst Faith Groups, chaplaincy bodies and users; providing a means of consultation between the Faiths about healthcare chaplaincy; and working in co-operation with healthcare and chaplaincy organisations, bodies and authorities.

In particular, the MFGHC seeks to provide advice to the Department of Health about multi-faith healthcare chaplaincy on behalf of all Faith Groups; to enable those Faith Groups engaged in healthcare chaplaincy to formulate, agree and promulgate policy on healthcare chaplaincy in consultation with other chaplaincy bodies; and to promote the highest quality of healthcare chaplaincy through the development of agreed standards across all Faith Groups and within healthcare organisations.

Management and administrative support is provided by a Chief Officer (Revd Edward Lewis) who manages resources on the Council’s behalf and by Tim Battle.

AUTHORISATION PROCESS – DESIGNATING AUTHORISATION BODIES

Background

1. Authorisation is the process whereby faith communities indicate that priests/ ministers/ leaders are “in good standing” with the faith community. Such “good standing” enables them to represent the faith community in their work and implies that they understand and espouse the main tenets of the faith community’s teachings and behave in accordance with any code of conduct or similar agreement.
2. Authorisation arrangements relating to healthcare chaplaincy are in place for the Christian and Jewish faith communities. MFGHC agreed in 2004 that it would develop processes for authorisation for the other world faiths and progress has been reported regularly. This paper proposes an objective point for designating authorisation bodies.
3. As the Council knows from the regular reports (most recently May 2006), steady progress is being made towards introducing authorisation processes for healthcare chaplains within all nine world faith communities which wish to follow this approach to supporting patients in healthcare settings. It is likely that during 2007 several communities will wish to finalise their arrangements so that NHS bodies can deal with them direct.  Such arrangements would be strengthened by an endorsement from MFGHC.
4. For this endorsement to be possible, the Council will wish to satisfy itself that the Faith Community has developed a capacity to handle the workload associated with this activity:

Current state

• Identifying what aspect of pastoral need is the faith community seeking to meet through its healthcare chaplaincy.
• Making arrangements to maintain a Selection system which results in suitable candidates being sponsored for training.
• Making arrangements for suitable candidates to be trained in the work of the faith community’s healthcare chaplains.
• Making arrangements for candidates who complete suitable training to be subject to a Report from the Principal of the educational establishment to the sponsor confirming that attainment.
• Making arrangements for candidates to be authorized as healthcare chaplains by the faith community.
• Making arrangements for the authorized chaplain to maintain safe practice by following guidelines issued by the faith community as to the conduct of authorized persons
• Making arrangements for the faith community to oversee the conduct of the authorised person where this appears to deviate from the guidelines proposed.

1. In the longer term, it is the intended that the authorisation bodies would be members of the MFGHC on behalf of the faith community.
2. In order to make this assessment, it is suggested that members of the Executive Committee should meet with the relevant faith community body to discuss progress with a view to reporting to Council in September which bodies might be designated to take this responsibility with effect from January 2008.

BUDDHIST HEALTHCARE CHAPLAINCY GROUP (BHCG)

Interest has been shown and discussion taken place within the Buddhist community for many years as on its wish to be involved in Hospital Chaplaincy. For some years the Buddhist Society fostered this project and first bid for funding.

In 2005 a more concerted initiative, BHCG, got going in particular to meet the wishes of the NHS for more trained chaplains from different faiths. BHCG has now taken over the mantle from the Buddhist Society and has been engaged in an extensive consultative process within the Buddhist community that has included at least some interaction with the following groups, schools or traditions:

Samatha Association, Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, Amida Trust, Rigpa Spiritual Care UK, Soto Zen, Shenpen (Dzoghen), Buddhist Society, Network of Buddhist Organisations, Amaravati, Buddhist Hospice Trust, Buddhavihara Temple [Lichfield] and New Kadampa Tradition (NKT).

In December 2006 a questionnaire sent out to 600 hospitals in England and Wales received 86 replies revealed no paid chaplains and an estimated 30 or more chaplains working as volunteers within chaplaincy teams (many of these were trained by NKT). Most hospitals answering the questionnaire said that they could contact a Buddhist to visit a patient if required, e.g. in an emergency.

The main focus of discussion within the Buddhist community has been on:

– describing competencies that we want to see developed in a Buddhist Chaplain

– mechanisms by which a trainee Buddhist Chaplain would seek to become accredited

– the establishment of a ‘board’ to authorise the accreditation of Buddhist Chaplains

Authorisation is the process whereby a faith community can indicate that individuals are suited to represent their faith community in this work.

Currently there are a variety of approaches within Buddhism that go some or all the way toward providing suitable training, as follows:  Rigpa Spiritual Care UK programme, Amida Trust chaplaincy training and NKT Hospital chaplaincy training programme. It is envisaged that a training programme suitable for Buddhists from any school will be developed.

Buddhism, amongst other faiths, has expressed its interest to become ‘authorised’ this year (2007). Currently Christianity and Judaism authorise their own chaplains.

SUPPORT FOR THE BHCG PROJECT

BCHG is seeking both support for this project and agreement with its aims and principles from as wide a range of Buddhist groups as possible.

Keith Munnings, BHCG Chairman (07931 532006), May 2007