Heartbeat: First class Rev Mary receives postgraduate degree in chaplaincy studies

January 15, 2020

Reverend, mother, grandmother and graduate – there’s more than meets the eye to our Lead Chaplain, Mary Causer. She leads a multi-faith team supported by a dedicated band of volunteers. Together, they look after patients, staff and relatives across our Trust. The chaplains are on call 24/7 – listening to individuals’ when they need someone to talk to and providing emotional support, as well as spiritual and pastoral guidance.

When Mary joined us in 2016 her ambition was to help the department to become part of the fabric of the Trust. She said: “I’m seeing that starting to happen more. We’re being involved in areas like palliative care training.”

Mary doesn’t take the task of being lead chaplain lightly and is keen to meet the needs of those that use our hospitals and beyond. Fostering links with local communities is especially important.

The long term goal is to really engage the hearts and minds of those in the communities we serve. The team lead celebration services for all the main holidays such as Christmas, Eid and Diwali. We’d like to see the community become more involved.

Looking forward to the opening of Midland Met, Mary has begun planning how the team will become more ingrained in community life. She commented: “We’ll have a new faith centre and the plan is to involve community and religious groups more. We’d like to invite people into the hospital so they can get closer to what we do. We want to reach out to families and hold events that they can be a part of like crafts afternoons and a range of creative classes for patients.”

In October, Mary completed her postgraduate degree in chaplaincy. Having already completed her BA with honours in Theology, this was an opportunity to cultivate new skills. As well as having a religious and spiritual focus, it also looked at management and leadership skills. Mary commented: “The course gave me a renewed confidence in what I do and how I deal with my team. I’m thankful that the Trust enabled me to complete my postgraduate degree.”

Taking one year in total, the learnings from her degree have already been put to good use in her role. She said, “It offered me the opportunity to reflect on what I do and the knock-on effect has been to help my team do the same. We deal with lots of events, some tragic and, we must stop and reflect too. I’m introducing the practice of reflection and it’s going well.”