Chaplain

Chaplain

Closing date: 27 May 2026

To respond to the diversity of pastoral needs in the hospital community with sensitivity and compassion, demonstrating quality of care for persons encountered.

• To enable the Chaplaincy Service to deliver high quality pastoral, religious and spiritual care across mental health and learning disability inpatient units in Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
• To support the visibility of the Chaplaincy service as directed by the Lead Chaplain ensuring that clinical contact with patients and staff is prioritised.
• To support the Lead Chaplain in leading a multi-faith and ecumenical team of both ordained and lay people; co-operating with each other to provide a flexible and responsive service of pastoral, religious and spiritual care to patients, relatives and staff of LYPFT.
• To take a lead role where directed in identifying and implementing strategic development and service change within the service to meet the needs of patients, relatives, volunteers and staff.

Main duties of the job

This Band 6 Chaplain post is an autonomous, senior clinical role providing specialist spiritual, pastoral and religious care to patients, families and staff across mental health and learning disability services. It combines direct clinical work, service development, education, and leadership within a multi faith, multi-disciplinary context.

Core clinical responsibilities
The chaplain provides regular ward and departmental visits, offers one-to-one and group support, and responds to complex spiritual, emotional and ethical needs, including in crisis, end of life and post incident situations. They undertake and document specialist spiritual assessments, contribute to MDT care planning and risk discussions, and design and lead worship, rituals and reflective events appropriate to mental health and learning disability settings.

Knowledge, professionalism and autonomy
The role requires in depth knowledge of one's own faith/belief tradition, a good understanding of other faiths and non religious worldviews, and specific study and experience related to mental health and learning disability. The postholder works largely independently within NHS and CPCPC frameworks, prioritising complex referrals, making day to day clinical decisions, and either holding or actively working towards CPCPC registration with evidence of ongoing CPD.

About us

The Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) is the main provider of Mental Health and Learning Disability services in Leeds. We also provide specialist inpatient services in York and some highly specialised services across the country. As a teaching trust with strong links to local universities, we are a centre of excellence for teaching, research and development.

There are many benefits of working for LYPFT including fantastic employee wellbeing support, 27-33 days annual leave, flexible working and remote working arrangements, the NHS Pension Scheme, coaching, support and opportunities for career development and training and education support alongside a range of exclusive discounts and payment schemes including for cars, extra leave days and more NHS Discount Offers.

Applicants should be aware that individuals requiring a visa to work in the UK, the Trust only provides sponsorship for registered healthcare practitioner roles (this does not include Healthcare Support Workers). This is an essential requirement, and the Trust is unable to offer you a role if you do not meet Trust requirements for sponsorship and Home Office requirements for a visa.

Job responsibilities

To carry out any other work as directed by the Lead Chaplain or the Patient Experience and Involvement Lead. To provide spiritual, pastoral and religious care for a highly diverse population in which Christian and no religion identities are largest, with smaller but important Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist and other communities. To help ensure equitable access to chaplaincy for non religious people and minority faith groups, addressing current under representation in referrals. To lead and support initiatives to improve the recording and clinical use of religion/belief information and to embed chaplaincy in mental health pathways.

The chaplain uses highly developed communication skills to engage with people in distress, explain complex spiritual and ethical issues, and influence multidisciplinary practice. They act as an initial resource for staff support (one to one, reflective practice, debriefs), model compassionate communication, contribute to staff training and take delegated leadership for particular areas, projects or workstreams.

Service development, governance and education

Working with the Lead Chaplain and Patient Experience leads, the postholder helps design, implement and review chaplaincy strategies, policies and quality improvement initiatives. They share responsibility for data collection, audit, research and evaluation to evidence impact, and contribute to teaching, training and research across the Trust, positioning chaplaincy as an ethical, theological and pastoral resource.

Practical, emotional and environmental demands

The role involves moving across multiple sites, using IT systems and working flexibly, including in challenging, sometimes distressing environments such as acute wards, PICU, forensic and LD settings. The chaplain manages sustained emotional and mental effort-frequent exposure to distress, trauma, bereavement and disturbed behaviour-supported by regular supervision, reflective practice and team meetings to maintain resilience and safe practice.

Person Specification Qualifications

• To have degree level ordination training or equivalent. To have or be working towards CPCPC registration. To have a qualification in counselling or a related area of mental health.

Skills

• Advanced communication and pastoral skills in complex/distressing situations, strong IT and networking skills, ability to supervise volunteers and contribute to policy, staff support and team development.

Experience

• Minimum four years post ordination (or equivalent) pastoral/ministerial experience, including healthcare chaplaincy at Band 5 and work with people with mental health conditions and learning disabilities.

Knowledge

• Specialist understanding of spiritual/religious care in mental health and LD settings, including own faith tradition, other faiths and non religious worldviews, equality/diversity, safeguarding and service improvement practice.
• Teaching/training experience; leading staff and volunteers; service development and audit experience; strong multi faith and community links; comfortable working with non religious and spiritually mixed identities; staff support/reflective practice experience; some community mental health experience.

Values

• Tell us about a time when you spotted something small going wrong and did something to stop it becoming a bigger issue.
• Tell us about a time when you realised a colleague or someone you know needed a bit of support and you offered to help.
• Tell us about a time when you showed someone kindness or understanding.

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

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust