Description

Building on a project initiated through a June 2020 Theology Program grant, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University will provide additional rapid-response support for chaplains, expanding spiritual care provision for front-line staff overwhelmed and traumatized by “the pandemics of COVID-19 and racial inequality.” The first stage of the initiative has involved supporting chaplains through free support groups and webinars, along with providing parallel educational materials focused on issues of resilience and trauma-informed recovery for chaplains. In addition to these services, the lab has provided small grants to ten project teams of front-line chaplains collaborating with administrators in their institutions to expand the spiritual care offered to staff. A new HLF urgent needs grant will allow the lab to increase the number of small grants it offers, providing support for several additional project teams at the front lines. Having already received a significant number of strong applications in response to earlier calls for proposals, the lab is currently positioned to identify new funding recipients and to distribute funds in the coming weeks.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust chaplains and spiritual care providers from the edges, where they traditionally do their quiet work, to the front page. In a range of national media outlets, they have been profiled “running towards the dying rather than away,” supporting anxious healthcare providers, and communicating with family members not permitted to be with their loved ones, even in their final moments. The crisis has brought military chaplains – more accustomed to working with mass casualties – into dialogue with healthcare chaplains who are quickly adapting to multiple deaths, shining a light on the common issues of fear, grief, trauma and uncertainty seen by chaplains who work with people across sectors, including in prisons, hospitals, and nursing homes, and on the campuses of colleges and universities.
With the support of their professional organizations and the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, chaplains have mobilized quickly. They have gathered in webinars that challenged Zoom capacities, freely shared materials online, and brainstormed how to best support those in their care through private Facebook groups. Many pivoted to tele-chaplaincy as their employers made different decisions about whether they were essential employees who needed to be physically present (especially in healthcare organizations where the demand for PPE was acute) or could do their work remotely. The main professional training organization for healthcare chaplains, ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education, put out a call for volunteers and within a week had 1500 chaplains prepared to offer free remote support to any organization that requested it.
With encouragement from the Luce Foundation’s Theology Program, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab rapidly and thoughtfully proposed a project to support chaplains and spiritual care providers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lab is providing individual support to front-line chaplains, preparing webinars and educational materials for use in this and future crises, and partnering with chaplains to expand spiritual care provision for staff in the institutions they serve who are overwhelmed and traumatized by the crisis. As the project’s leaders wrote in their initial proposal, “If those who rely on the spiritual support of chaplains – in hospitals and beyond – are to continue to get the best possible spiritual care, we must support the well-being of chaplains and provide resources to expand their capacity inside of their organizations as they are called to do more now than ever before.”
To support chaplains who have been on the front lines, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab has partnered with trauma-informed counselors to offer small, somatic-focused groups where chaplains can begin to process their feelings and emotions. In addition to this individual support, the Lab is producing free webinars, with parallel educational materials, focused on issues of resilience and trauma-informed recovery for chaplains. The webinars and educational materials will help front-line chaplains, as well as serving educators who will be preparing future chaplains respond to this and future crises.
Finally, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab is making half of the funds in the Luce Foundation June 2020 grant available to front-line chaplains collaborating with administrators in their institutions to expand the spiritual care offered to the staff with whom they work. Funded projects will enable chaplains to do additional staff care, partner with Human Resources or Employee Assistance Programs to streamline response, or test new spiritual care interventions. A researcher from the Lab will be connected to each project to evaluate impact, enhance networking across projects, and scale the most successful for future crises. A new grant from Luce will allow the Lab to increase the number of such projects it supports.