The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy is a theologically based covenant community, dedicated to "recovery of the soul" and promoting competency in the clinical pastoral field.
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Dr. Christopher Swift, Past President of the UK's College of Health Care Chaplains (CHCC), is a friend and colleague of the CPSP. He was the Guest of Honor at the 2007 CPSP Plenary held in Raleigh, NC where he brought greetings from the CHCC and dialogued with the CPSP community. He sent us words of support and a prayer he had written following a shooting massacre at one of our universities.
Recently, Dr, Swift published his new book: Hospital Chaplaincy in the Twenty-First Century: the crisis of spiritual care in the NHS. The book is published by Ashgate.
Professor Paul Ballard, Cardiff University, UK provided the following comments on Dr. Swift's book:
Health care chaplaincy is currently undergoing a rapid transformation. An inherited and accepted service, embedded in the National Health Service since its inception, it is inevitably caught up in the changes that affect both the service as a whole and the wider social context. This invaluable book will stand the test of time. Health care professionals will find it a constant point of reference as they wrestle with the issues both locally and nationally. Many others will find this book a way of being informed about a key area of health care. Most importantly, there is a challenge here to the churches to take chaplaincy seriously as the frontier ministry it is. For practical theologians this is a welcome and accessible study of a vital sector of ministry, useful for reflection and teaching.
Dr. Swift is obviously addressing issues related to chaplaincy in the National Health Service. This does not mean his work is irrelevant to chaplaincy in the USA. We are also facing an evolving, changing, complex and challenging world within our health care services. We struggle to understand, inform and advocate for the unique role of chaplaincy within our health care systems. In fact, the description of his book found on Amazon.Com hits close to home:
Issues of faith and spirituality have been resurgent in the UK since the opening of the twenty-first century. This book charts the impact of shifting attitudes towards spirituality through the experiences of health care chaplains. Rooted in a new and challenging interpretation of the chaplain's work in the past, the book moves on to describe a current crisis in the nature of spiritual care. Using the tools of practical theology to analyze these experiences, fundamental problems are identified for chaplains as they work within the culture of 'evidence based practice'. As the National Health Service struggles to balance its books in the face of national economic uncertainty, chaplains will continue to come under increasing levels of scrutiny. Some chaplains have faced the prospect of redundancy or cuts to their budgets, while a growing number of NHS Trusts no longer offer chaplaincy to patients out of hours. In this context the nature of chaplaincy itself has come into question, and rival models of the profession have emerged. Is chaplaincy a new and distinct profession within health care, based on evidence and available to all? Or is it State-funded religious activity, theoretically open to all but in practice utilized chiefly by the faithful few? In responding to these questions the book concludes with a vision of how chaplaincy can both maintain its integrity - and be a valued part of twenty-first century health care.
A copy of Hospital Chaplaincy in the Twenty-First Century: the crisis of spiritual care in the NHS can be purchased on Amazon.Com.
Perry Miller, Editor
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Contact Dr. Christopher Swift by clicking here.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at May 6, 2009 12:31 AM
