Meet our Trust Chaplaincy Team
Our Chaplains are here to ensure that the spiritual, religious and cultural values or faith beliefs or none are respected and supported by each person who uses the services of the Trust or works within it.
Meet Laurence
Laurence is our Band 7 Lead Chaplain joined the Trust in 2023 and has brought some excellent ideas for a modern chaplaincy offer including being more visible and accessible to all.
“I bring with me a wealth of pastoral and ministerial experience, as well as my cross-cultural and psychological training. I ran a counselling centre in London for two years, until the money ran out and was then offered a role as a Hospice chaplain, where I stayed for the next fifteen years. I developed a multi-faith Chaplaincy team exploring ways and means of empowering people to tell their story, enabling people to feel empowered by their faith (if they had one) and building resilience in the face of life-limiting illness. I see a strong connection between psychological and spiritual care, as both address the inner world of the patient, albeit using different language. I’m excited to be here at the Trust, and I look forward to exploring creative ways of supporting service users, family members and staff.”
Meet Jo
Jo is our Band 6 Chaplain is based at the Becklin Centre Faith Room and joined the Trust in June 2024.
“My first career was in the theatre where alongside working at the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre I was interested in therapeutic approaches. I later began counselling training and practiced Co-Counselling (CCI) before studying Theology and Religion at Oxford and Cambridge Universities as a mature student. I then worked for ten years as a non-conformist minister in Leeds city centre. As minister, as well as running the day-to-day activities and events of the church, I was responsible for pastoral care, often providing one-to-one crisis care at point of need, and successfully supervising a mental health self-help group for several years. I have been influenced by the Christian Contemplative spiritual tradition developing mindful and prayerful practice and working to integrate this approach with my theatre experience, with its focus on the body. My interest in mental health, spirituality, and the arts inform holistic approaches to psycho/spiritual recovery.”
Meet Deborah
Deborah is our Team Administratorjoined the team in May 2024 and splits her time between our Mount and Becklin chaplaincy offices providing admin support to our chaplains and volunteers as well as arranging our events and meetings.
She is the first port of call for all queries and referrals for our team.