Spiritual Support Lead

Job description

Job responsibilities

About us: St Wilfrid's Hospice provides end of life support to the population of Eastbourne and the surrounding parts of East Sussex, from our stunning hospice building and through our highly skilled community teams. We are rated an 'outstanding' provider by the Care Quality Commission and have a clear vision of reaching increasing numbers of local patients and their families, in close collaboration with our community. We provide a supportive working environment, which is demonstrated through our values: compassionate, professional, progressive, and respectful and these are embedded in our culture. We have a dynamic learning environment that actively promotes and facilitates opportunities for career progression through our competency framework. We particularly encourage applications from disabled candidates, candidates from ethnic minority groups, LGBTQ+ as well as non-binary candidates and those who have experienced mental health issues. The Role: Our people are vital to the future of St Wilfrid's Hospice and it is essential that we recruit and retain the very best individuals and offer a supportive, engaging, and rewarding working environment. We are seeking a forward-thinking and compassionate Spiritual Support Lead to further embed spiritual support, across all faiths and for individuals of no faith, in the ethos of our organisation. The summary statement of the hospice's vision for spiritual support, coming out of an in-depth 6-month stakeholder engagement exercise and review in 2018, is included with the supporting documents. It is this vision the postholder will be expected take forward. You will bring substantial demonstrable life experience within and/or relevant to spiritual support. You may come from a faith or no faith background but with a solid grounding in your own position in this regard. You will a bring a breadth of knowledge and experience that includes addressing existential distress. From a strong person-centred stance, you will be confident in meeting individuals' religious or spiritual needs, whether in line with your own stance or not, both in person and crucially, by empowering and facilitating others to do so. This will include your multi-disciplinary colleagues, volunteers and external partners. You will have a firm commitment to working collaboratively, both internally and through engagement with our local community. You will be confident providing leadership and co-ordination in working towards a vision of spiritual support at the hospice as 'everyone's business'. Benefits included:

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Degree in a relevant subject
• Evidence of continuous professional development relevant to spiritual support

Desirable

• Teaching / training experience
• Counselling experience
• Knowledge of minority faith groups with a firm commitment to interdenominational and interfaith
• working and liaison
• Knowledge of national guidance relevant to spiritual support in palliative and end of life care
• Research awareness and/or experience participating in or leading research relevant to role

Experience

Essential

• Substantial demonstrable life experience within and/or relevant to spiritual support
• Evidence of continuous professional development relevant to spiritual support
• Significant experience of providing spiritual support to people of all faiths and/or no faith (whether in a previous spiritual support role or in a related profession)
• Breadth of knowledge and experience that includes working with people living through significant loss and life change, addressing their existential distress
• Experience working within or with a secular organisation and awareness of the potential particular challenges this may pose
• Experience of working in or in partnership with a health or social care setting
• Strong team working orientation, with the ability and social skills to work collaboratively with staff and volunteers at all levels and in particular multi-disciplinary team colleagues
• Experience of developing a service or team, including evaluation, using outcome and impact measures and quality improvement approaches
• Experience of working with volunteers and/or colleagues, providing support and supervision to them with regards to their delivery of spiritual support
• Experience of collaborative working in an all faiths / no faith context

Desirable

• Experience of working with individuals and families specifically at end of life
• Experience of working in a palliative care setting and understanding of hospice and palliative care philosophy

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

St Wilfrid's Hospice

Address

St Wilfrid's Hospice, 1 Broadwater Way

Eastbourne

BN22 9PZ

Employer's website

https://www.stwhospice.org/ (Opens in a new tab)