The Department for Education has just published its updated guidance for safeguarding in out-of-school settings, which includes supplementary religious settings. Please see the links below for information on what needs to be done if you provide supplementary activities for children. Visit the link below for updated safeguarding guidance for providers and parents.
Introduction to Spiritual Distress: Research and Implications for Spiritual Care
Webinars for Free Church and other UK chaplains
November 21 & 29, 9:00 – 10:15 am Central Standard Time/ 3:00-4:15 PM GMT
Session 1: Basic Concepts, Examples, Prevalence, 21st November 2023
Session 2: Harmful Effects, Tools for Screening, Future Research, 29th November 2023
Description: Religious or spiritual (R/S) distress includes tensions and struggles about finding meaning in illness or injury and/or tensions and struggles with what one holds to be sacred. In these webinars we will review the research about R/S distress and discuss its implications for spiritual care providers. We will also look at methods that have been developed to identify patients or family caregivers who may be experiencing R/S distress and possibly benefit from referral to a spiritual care provider.
In Session 1 we will review basic concepts and definitions about R/S distress, and we will look at several vignettes of patients with R/S distress. Then we will examine some of the research about the prevalence of R/S distress and consider its implications for spiritual care providers.
In Session 2 we will examine some of the research about the harmful effects associated with R/S distress. Then we will review some tools that have been developed to screen for R/S distress and discuss how they can be incorporated in clinical settings to improve the provision of spiritual care. We will also discuss areas for future research about R/S distress.
Presenter: George Fitchett, D.Min., Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Religion, Health, and Human Values, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago Illinois. With training in both healthcare chaplaincy and epidemiology, he is one of the U.S.’s leading chaplain-researchers. In 1999 he and his colleagues reported the harmful effects of R/S distress in a sample of medical rehabilitation patients. The topic has remained a focus of his research. He is the former Director of Transforming Chaplaincy, whose mission is to promote evidence-based spiritual care (www.transformchaplaincy.org). In 2019 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University for Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Transforming Chaplaincy: The George Fitchett Reader, a collection of his research, was published in the Fall, 2021.
These webinars are free to attend thanks to support from the College of Healthcare Chaplains and the Free Churches Group
Please book your place HERE.
Big Give Christmas Challenge, The Welcome Directory
The Welcome Directory is taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge and is looking for supporters of this incredible work to pledge a minimum of £100 for which Match Funding will be sought. Emily Green, Welcome Directory Project Manager recently released the following information about pledges. Please do consider how you might be able to support this charity, started by the Free Churches Group in 2014.
We are excited to announce that The Welcome Directory has applied to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge - the UK’s biggest match-funded campaign!
We are raising funds for our project ‘Christmas Connections’ to combat the loneliness and social isolation that people so often experience when stepping beyond the prison gates.
To take part in this challenge, we are looking for key individuals to support us by making 'Pledges’, which will be used as match funds to double online donations made to our charity during the Christmas campaign period. We cannot take part in this challenge without you.
We are aiming to raise a total of £1,500 in pledges to take part in the campaign. Could you pledge a minimum of £100 to help us reach this target? Your commitment to funding will also help us to secure additional match funds via a Champion (sourced by the Big Give).
You can make a pledge by simply completing the online form by the 30th of August.
What is The Welcome Directory?
The Welcome Directory is a non-profit, multi-faith organisation, dedicated to supporting the resettlement and social inclusion of prison leavers by building a network of welcoming and supporting faith communities beyond the gates.
Our work helps to combat loneliness and social isolation amongst prisoners in the post-release landscape, supporting positive mental health through faith-based social inclusion for reducing rates of re-offending.
The release period for prison leavers is an extremely challenging time, with an estimated 44% of adults reconvicted less than one year after leaving prison, which can prove devastating to an individual’s mental health. Connecting a prison leaver to a faith community can make all the difference – especially at Christmas. Our YouTube video 'Beyond the Prison Gates' captures, through the voice of prison leavers, the long-term impact that TWD can make to an individual’s release journey.
Whilst a small charity, we are highly regarded within the criminal justice sector, working in collaboration with HM Prison and Probation Service.
The Welcome Directory has been acknowledged in both the House of Lords and the Church of England’s General Synod and has increased engagement by 187% since the end of 2020.
What is the Big Give: Christmas Challenge?
For seven days, the challenge offers supporters the opportunity to double their donations. This makes an extraordinary difference to the lives of prison leavers. One donation, twice the impact!
When our online supporters donate during the campaign period at Christmas, their donation is matched by your generous pledge. So, £50 from a member of the public is immediately doubled and becomes £100 directly to support the resettlement of prison leavers. Watch their video here.
• The fulfilment of your pledge is conditional on us receiving the appropriate online donations during the campaign. You will only be required to pay a pro-rata amount of your pledge if we don’t hit our online target - it's our guarantee to you that we are committed to raising additional donations.
• Please note that if you pledge to The Welcome Directory, you will not be able to make an online donation to us during the campaign period in December because your pledge will be used to match these donations.
We are incredibly grateful for your consideration. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with any questions about our Christmas Connections campaign.
Does government do God?
Reflection from Yvonne Campbell, Director of the Free Churches Group
Being part of the Free Churches Group is such a privilege and an opportunity.
Earlier this year Colin Bloom published a report titled “Does government do God? As part of the Government’s response, the Free Churches were asked to provide feedback on the report in a round table meeting with Baroness Scott, the Minister of Faith. Drawing on briefings from the Free Church Secretaries and Paul our General Secretary, I was pleased to participate in the first meeting with the Minister and a small group of church leaders.
The report is very detailed and really interesting especially for anyone praying for the future of the Church. I highly recommend you read at least the summary and the recommendations. Here is the link to access the report.
The Church has an amazing opportunity to be the hope in our communities at a challenging time and this report, which was welcomed by those at the meeting with Baroness Scott, could help to play a part in that. The Free Churches Group was invited to play its part in making the recommendations of the report a reality. We definitely have an important voice that needs to be heard and excellent work to share that local churches are doing in communities across the country.
The report claims that “Faith is an ‘overriding force for good’ and government needs to improve its engagement with these groups.”
The main areas of conversation in the meeting focused on the following:
Faith Literacy
How to help Government and those with no faith or belief understand our Christian beliefs and way churches serve and connect people in communities. The Government also needs to be more transparent about how churches and faith organisations can connect with local and national government. Discussion took place about making faith literacy creative, using stories and involving young people.
Safeguarding
A Faith Compact/Charter is going to be written to help government departments to more effectively join up around the recommendations relating to safeguarding out-of-school settings.
Religious Education
There was a discussion about RE in schools and statistics were shared on the need for improvement, in relation to Ofsted figures on non-compliance with Government requirements. The Minister showed a great deal of interest in this issue. We are hopeful that specific action will be taken to address the areas of concern raised.
Chaplaincy
I highlighted that there was much more scope needed in the report on chaplaincy and we as the Free Churches have a concentration of expertise in chaplaincy ministry, primarily in healthcare, prisons, education and the Armed Forces. There was interest in the Free Churches ‘Chaplaincy Hub’, which we are continuing to develop. Only prison chaplaincy was mentioned in the report in any depth. I was able to confirm that we agree with the importance of speedily reforming the means by which Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service source and resource the faith and belief advisors. There was a useful discussion about healthcare chaplaincy and the suggestion that NHS practitioners don’t always know how to treat patients of faith.
Faith Champion
The Faith Champion was discussed although there was no consensus on what the next steps should be.
Baroness Scott will of course be meeting other faith groups as the Government continues to take forward its response to this report. The Free Churches Group will continue to engage on this report and take advantage of any opportunities to help the Government take forward the recommendations.
At the end of the meeting, I had the privilege of praying for the Minister and the work she has to do.
Do share any thoughts or ways your church is responding to what the report highlights.
Yvonne Campbell
Director, Free Churches Group
General Secretary, Congregational Federation
Hello I'm Andy Kerr
Hello, I’m Andy Kerr, Managing Chaplain at HMP Ford Open Prison in Sussex.
Open Prison, I hear you say, what is that? Well, it’s a prison where instead of taking away someone’s liberty we start to give liberty back to them. It’s a very different prison from Cat A, B or C prisons, which appear mostly on our TV screens through dramas or documentaries. For example, a third of the people detained at Ford are working in ordinary jobs in the community, engaging with you or me every day: forklift truck drivers, office workers, gas fitters, crane operators and retail workers. We also release people home for 2 days a month and 4 nights once a month to rebuild family relationships, start parenting again and resettle. Onsite education and a college provide maths and English, with business studies, painting and decorating, engineering, drywall lining, and bricklaying courses amongst other opportunities.
How did I get to work in Prison?
I started out in life as a baker/confectioner, went into retail, delivered cars all over the UK, worked with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, spent years working on a housing estate in the Midlands that BBC had unhelpfully entitled ‘Estate from Hell’ in their documentary, was called into Baptist Ministry and led a couple of churches. It was whilst leading a church in the South that I found many of the people I met on the streets swigging lager or smoking cannabis seemed to have offences in their backstory. Some had spent a long time in prison and some were in and out more regularly.
I was struck early on in my ministry by Jesus’ manifesto in Luke 4.
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
If we the church are Christ’s body, then the ‘me’ in his manifesto becomes ‘us’! It really is that simple. So I left my church and started working at HMP Ford before going full time at HMP Lewes, and then finally coming back to HMP Ford in 2021.
Can I encourage you as churches to embrace His manifesto as well? I have found no greater delight, than to see the Holy Spirit of God working in prisoners’ lives, and the opportunity to join in with Him is a profound joy and a humbling experience.
Lastly a thought: the other day I met a young man in London who had been at HMP Ford. He said to me ‘how are you my brother?’!