Head of Chaplaincy

Overview

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust invites applications for the role of Head of Chaplaincy. The closing date is 18 September 2025.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a suitably qualified, experienced, visionary and talented healthcare chaplain to join East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust as Head of Chaplaincy. ESNEFT's Head of Chaplaincy provides strategic leadership to the Trust, leading on pastoral, spiritual and religious care within the organisation, and leading and managing the chaplaincy team. The Head of Chaplaincy role offers an exciting opportunity to lead a large chaplaincy team across multiple sites in a busy and culturally diverse organisation, and to further develop a multi-faith and belief approach to chaplaincy provision.

The Head of Chaplaincy role requires taking full responsibility for the role across the whole Trust whilst maintaining a level of operational chaplaincy commitment through the provision of face-to-face pastoral, spiritual and religious care to patients, relatives or staff members of any religion or belief, and by participating in the 24/7 on-call service and weekend working.

The successful candidate will be educated to Master's Degree Level or equivalent in experience, in an appropriate subject such as chaplaincy studies or pastoral theology and have substantial healthcare chaplaincy and management experience within the NHS, and in line with current UK Board of Healthcare Chaplaincy guidance. They will need to be able to use your own personal transport for chaplaincy duties, with appropriate travel expenses being offered in return.

We are ESNEFT and we provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people across east Suffolk and north Essex. Our dedicated staff deliver care from acute hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, community hospitals, surgeries, community clinics and in patients' own homes.

We are one of the largest NHS organisations in England, employing more than 12,000 staff. We pride ourselves on supporting our staff. We offer a wide range of training and development opportunities, as well as flexible working options. Along with supporting you to achieve your career goals we offer a generous pension scheme, unsocial hours payments (where applicable), 27 days annual leave on commencement (pro rata) and access to a range of NHS discounts. Our Staff Health and Wellbeing programme offer a variety of services. Our philosophy is that Time Matters to everyone. Across the Trust, we concentrate on improving the things we do and removing those which cause time delays for our staff and patients. We are investing in our commitment to Time Matters with a partnership with leading electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic. This digital transformation will bring what's widely regarded as the world's best EPR system to ESNEFT, transforming life in hospital for staff and patients. If you are passionate about patient care and want to develop your skills and knowledge, then we want to hear from you. Find out about living and working here -

Responsibilities

Develop, implement, monitor and review the strategy of the chaplaincy service in line with current NHS England chaplaincy guidance and guidance from professional and regulatory bodies (e.g. UKBHC chaplaincy Code of Conduct) and the Trust's corporate agenda, in consultation with the Deputy Director of Nursing Quality.

Manage the chaplaincy budget and charitable funds within Trust procedures and contribute to the drawing up of department/service budgets or financial initiatives. Act as an authorised signatory for small cash/financial payment (e.g. overtime, travel, ordering stock).

Contribute to the strategic and operational working of the chaplaincy service through collaboration with the wider patient services meetings, away-days and other relevant meetings and project work. Contribute towards policy implementation, providing advice on best practice and contribute to relevant decision making as part of patient services.

Further the development of the chaplaincy service and pastoral, spiritual and religious care in the Trust/community by making clear links between (a) the Trust's corporate agenda, (b) the spiritual, religious and pastoral needs of staff and patients, and (c) the resources of chaplaincy care.

Produce reports, business plans and business cases as and when required.

Identify financial resources to develop the human resources side of the department to meet national guidelines within a multi-faith and belief framework.

About us

We are ESNEFT and we provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people across east Suffolk and north Essex. Our dedicated staff deliver care from acute hospitals in Colchester and Ipswich, community hospitals, surgeries, community clinics and in patients' own homes.

We are one of the largest NHS organisations in England, employing more than 12,000 staff.

We pride ourselves on supporting our staff. We offer a wide range of training and development opportunities, as well as flexible working options.

Along with supporting you to achieve your career goals we offer a generous pension scheme, unsocial hours payments (where applicable), 27 days annual leave on commencement (pro rata) and access to a range of NHS discounts. Our Staff Health and Wellbeing programme offer a variety of services.

Our philosophy is that Time Matters to everyone. Across the Trust, we concentrate on improving the things we do and removing those which cause time delays for our staff and patients.

We are investing in our commitment to Time Matters with a partnership with leading electronic patient record (EPR) supplier Epic. This digital transformation will bring what's widely regarded as the world's best EPR system to ESNEFT, transforming life in hospital for staff and patients.

If you are passionate about patient care and want to develop your skills and knowledge, then we want to hear from you.

Find out about living and working here -

Job responsibilities

For full details of the responsibilities and duties of this role please see the attached job description.

Person Specification Qualifications

• Master's degree level qualification in subject(s) that embrace a theoretical understanding and practical application of pastoral, spiritual and religious care. e.g. practical theology, pastoral care, existential and humanist care, or equivalent experience
• Post-basic training relevant to healthcare chaplaincy
• Authorised faith or belief representative or chaplain eligible to be licensed/authorised by their respective faith or belief body
• Management Training Qualification equivalent to ILM Level 3 or above
• UKBHC Registered Chaplain
• Clinical Pastoral Education qualification, Post-graduate certificate or master's in healthcare chaplaincy
• Trained Mental Health First Aider

Experience

• Significant proven health care chaplaincy experience within the NHS
• Experience of management & managing teams
• Significant experience of providing pastoral, spiritual and religious care in an NHS setting
• Experience of working sensitively with people of all faiths and beliefs, and within multi-faith and belief teams
• Demonstrable good standing within own faith or belief community
• Experience of providing chaplaincy advice within a Trust and externally.
• Experience of healthcare chaplaincy in a specialist area e.g. palliative care, surgery, critical care, A&E
• Experience of managing a chaplaincy team in the NHS
• Experience of creating and delivering spiritual, pastoral and religious care training programmes
• Experience of managing and training chaplaincy volunteers.
• Experience of supervising students on placement.
• Experience of undertaking research, service evaluation and audit.

Knowledge

• Awareness of NHS management structure, organisation, strategy & policy
• Knowledge of how to line manage one or more members of staff and undertake their development, including through the use of HR policies
• Knowledge and understanding of national policies and procedures relevant to the provision of an acute healthcare chaplaincy service
• Understanding of the dynamics of large NHS organisations, and the opportunities and challenges experienced by chaplaincy services in such healthcare settings.
• Working knowledge of faith and belief systems, rituals and practices other than one's own; and the ability to apply this knowledge working in a secular multi-cultural, multi-faith and belief context.
• An understanding of medical ethics
• Excellent knowledge of NHS management structure, organisation, strategy and policy
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.

Employer name

East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust