News & Updates

Letter from Jill Thornton, AHPCC President

Dear Friends

I hope that this letter finds you well.

Although I’m not yet back full time, I attended the last meeting of the AHPCC Executive, and we agreed that it would be helpful if I send you an update regarding the discernment process that we are engaged in as an Association about our future.

In November, Karen sent out a letter on behalf of the Exec carefully summarising the background to our situation and presented 2 options that had emerged out of the membership’s discussions at our AGM in May 2024, and the Exec’s reflections on those discussions at their November meeting. You were then invited to think about these 2 options, discuss them with your AHPCC colleagues and send your views back to us by the end of January.

The Exec reflected carefully on those responses at our meeting in February 2025 and because there remain some outstanding questions regarding Option 2, the working group was tasked with exploring these further with representatives from the CHCC and bring back their findings to our next Exec meeting in April. However, if you have views that you have not yet shared with us, please send them to secretary@ahpcc.org.uk as soon as possible – in order to make an informed decision, it’s important that everyone has had the opportunity to raise questions whilst we still have time to explore our options.

A document that clearly sets out the working groups findings to the questions raised will then be sent out to members after the Exec meeting in April and before the vote which will take place after our AGM.

This year, we will be holding our AGM online on Monday May 12^th from 2- 4pm.

I am very grateful to you all for your honesty and the trust that you have shown us, your Exec, throughout this process so far. Whilst emotions run deep for all of us on this subject, I feel that we are engaged in a genuine process of discernment which will help us to make an informed decision about our future when the time comes.

With very best wishes,

Jill Thornton

PS Whilst we agreed not to hold a conference this year, we have been exploring alternative opportunities for members to collect CPD points and meet up. Please look at our website for further details.

Study Day on 5th June – “Making Our Cases: Using Story and Data to Demonstrate Value”

One of the challenges for healthcare chaplaincy is to develop ways of demonstrating the benefit, impact and value of our care. Chaplains’ work often relates to more intangible aspects of patient and staff care, which can be difficult to quantify and measure using traditional healthcare metrics. This study day (supported by the AHPCC and the Free Churches Group,) is open to anyone to attend and will explore different and creative ways to showcase the positive influence of chaplaincy services.

Confirmed speakers include:

Mark Evans, National Adviser for Spiritual Care in the Scottish Government on ‘Developing a Minimum Data Set in Scotland’.
Frin Lewis-Smith, specialist chaplain for oncology and palliative care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals on ‘Spiritual pain by Numbers?’
Steve Nolan Bereavement & Spiritual Care Lead, Princess Alice Hospice and Visiting Research Fellow at University of Winchester on ‘Learning from Case Studies.’
Clare Pye, Research & Innovation Manager at St Luke’s Hospice in Sheffield

Alongside speaker presentations, the day will include live storytelling from a number of chaplains as a way of exploring how stories can connect, challenge, inspire and validate us. For more information and booking, please visit our Training Events and Conferences page.

Palliative Care and Hospice Chaplains Retreat at Skanda Vale

Skanda Vale is a place where people from different backgrounds and faiths can live, work and worship together harmoniously, in a beautiful natural environment in Wales. Their community have generously organised a free three-day retreat, from the 31st March to the 2nd April, for hospice and palliative care chaplains. For more information and a retreat programme, please refer to our Training Events and Conferences page. To book, please email Sister Ally.

Study Day in Partnership with Free Churches Group

Mark Newitt, chair of the Free Churches Group, is organising a study day to be run in partnership with the AHPCC. The study day is called Marking our Cases: Using Story and Data to Demonstrate Value, and will feature contributions from:

Mark Evans (National Adviser for Spiritual Care in the Scottish Government)
Clare Pye (Research & Innovation Manager at St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield)
Steve Nolan (Spiritual Care and Bereavement Lead at Princess Alice Hospice, Surrey)
Frin Lewis-Smith (Specialist Outpatient Oncology Chaplain at Leeds Teaching Hospitals)

The study day, on the 5th June, will take place in London, and will cost £35 for AHPCC members (£50 for non-members). Booking details will be posted as soon as they become available.

Regarding the AHPCC’s Future

Earlier this year, Karen Murphy wrote a letter to our membership, presenting options for the AHPCC’s future, to be voted on at this year’s AGM. You can find the letter here.

Chaplaincy Forum Update

The Chaplaincy Forum met on the 21st January, and shared five points for dissemination. You can read them on our UKBHC and other Organisations page.

Monthly Online Living Room

Leti Hawthorn is hosting an informal monthly meeting for chaplains. Upcoming dates are 1st April, 7th May, 3rd June and 2nd July.

For more information, or to sign up, please email secretary@ahpcc.org.uk.

2025 Membership Renewal Letter from The Treasurer

You can now join or renew your membership for 2025 by downloading the membership forms, available here.

Dear AHPCC member

We have reached that time of year when we ask for your annual membership subscriptions. As we do so, we are aware of the context in which we find ourselves this year. Due to the recent vote on the private members bill regarding assisted dying, the hospice sector is receiving much needed attention regarding the financial pressures across the sector. Of course, this comes at a time when there are also national and local pressures on the public purse. Perhaps this has also impacted your personal situation. Like most organisations AHPCC is not immune to these pressures.

The impact on AHPCC is becoming apparent in the following ways:

1. Slow or late take up of membership.
2. Decisions individuals and hospices are making regarding covering of conference fees.

At present membership costs £45 annually and provides members with access to Regional groups and for those elected, representation of AHPPC internally and externally. As well as the website resources, reduced conference fees and peer support.

Option of monthly standing order payment

We would like to offer a monthly standing order (STO) option for paying membership fees, in the hope that this offers some assistance in the future.

This would involve more administration. So we propose a monthly fee of £4 to cover the annual fee and contribution of 0.25p toward the additional administration costs.

We would anticipate notifying you annually that your renewal is due, so that you can continue or stop your standing order should you choose this option.

You will need to set up the standing order yourself with your bank and our bank details can be found on the membership form.

In order to reduce administration and the number of times we contact you, we will send an annual renewal notice, then follow this up on a maximum of two occasions, one month apart, after which we will send you an email to let you know that your membership has lapsed.

In the event of lapsed membership

The membership year will still run from 1st January – 31st December. However, if your membership lapses, we will let our Regional reps know, so you are removed from the records in keeping with data protection legislation and you will no longer be able to access the group.

This will also impact your ability to remain on the Executive Committee, if that applies to you.

It will always be possible to renew your membership, should you wish to do so. However, we will require that you do this in a timely manner to respect the time and effort it takes to attend to all of this administration.

If you would like to come back to me, Sue or any member of the Executive committee on any of the above, we would be pleased to hear from you.

Warm wishes
Lucyann
AHPCC Treasurer

Religion & Media Briefing: Where next for the Assisted Dying Bill?

The AHPCC was invited to be represented on a discussion arranged by the Religion and Media Centre following on from the Assisted Dying Bill debate. Karen Murphy was able to take part in the discussion on behalf of hospice chaplains working ‘in the field’. Karen writes that while it felt that academic voices were the strongest in the conversation, it was good to take part and offer some insight from our work and the issues we face.

Briefing: Where next for the Assisted Dying Bill?

‘Thought for the day’ from Tom Gordon

Tom Gordon was the president of the AHPCC for some years, and has published several books since retiring. He has also continued to produce a daily thought every day since March 2020.
You can find Tom’s thought for today, and for previous days, here

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AHPCC Membership

Is your AHPCC membership paid up and current? If you wish to join the AHPCC or renew your membership, you can download the Membership Form here. Membership is for the calendar year, but applications received after October 1 will cover the new year.

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If you’re new to this website…

Whether you’ve worked in palliative care for years or you’re new in post, we hope you find this website helpful. It’s regularly updated, and alerts also appear on Facebook, especially for new vacancies. Contributions of articles and resources are welcome. New items appear on this page for six to eight weeks, but after that, you can still find most of them in the main body of the website. Gary and Tim.

Praying In your prayers today please remember the patients, staff and volunteers of [cw_daily_quotes]

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