Hope Bearers’: Primary Healthcare Chaplaincy responding to mental health and spiritual needs.
The ACGP are hosting a national conference at the University of Birmingham on Friday 10th January 2025, entitled ‘Hope Bearers’: Primary Healthcare Chaplaincy responding to mental health and spiritual needs. This conference is aimed at representatives of faith groups seeking to support wellbeing within their communities, as well as current and prospective Primary Healthcare Chaplains, health service commissioners, GPs, and charitable funders.
Primary Healthcare Chaplaincy has been a developing and much-valued field within the ‘talking therapies’ arena for the last 25 years. It is an effective and innovative response to the struggle of primary healthcare to deal with those who suffer from a loss of wellbeing. As a readily accessible talking therapy available in a patient’s own local GP practice, Primary Healthcare Chaplaincy can meet the needs of these patients when many other NHS services are struggling to cope. A recent summative report found that the number of Primary Healthcare Chaplaincy services across the UK had increased by 460% in the last 4 years (from 5 services at the start of 2019 to 23 services by the end of 2022) .
Primary Healthcare Chaplains seek to support the physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs of patients within the primary healthcare setting. They understand that ‘spiritual needs’ relate to a person’s need for meaning, purpose, love, belonging and hope, whether or not these are expressed in terms of a religious faith. Therefore, it is a service for everyone, regardless of their faith and beliefs.