Chaplaincy: the ministry of presence – Clare Whitney

Gillian Straine: Welcome to the Go Health podcast. I’m Gillian Straine, chief exec of GoHealth, an organization with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. On this podcast, we have conversations to inspire us all to connect health and faith in everyday life. I am delighted that my guest today is Claire Whitney. Clare is a lay chaplain at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and is also currently training for ordination in the Church of England, and she’s a member of the GoHealth Community. Clare, it is so good to have you with us. I’m really looking forward to this conversation, particularly exploring how your vocation to chaplaincy began in a deeply personal moment when you found yourself being rushed to hospital with an ill child. And, in that experience, encountering chaplaincy for the first time. 

But before we begin, I just want to gently note for all of our listeners that later in this episode, we will be touching on themes of pregnancy loss. That’s not Clare’s personal story, but it is part of the reality of the context she ministers in. So if child loss, pregnancy loss is a particularly sensitive subject for you, please do take care of yourself as you listen and feel free to step away if you need to. 

Clare, it’s a joy to speak with somebody from the GoHealth community on the podcast. Welcome. Can you tell us how you first got connected with Go Health? 

Clare Witney: It’s good to be with you, Gillian. Yes. I think I stumbled on GoHealth a little bit by accident, but I had one or two chaplaincy colleagues who had had mentioned the GoHealth Community. I think I’ve always been really interested in healing and wholeness, and how we flourish as human beings. So it was wonderful just to connect with that community and really find my tribe, I think, in GoHealth.

Gillian: And was there any course in particular, that you found us by doing? 

Clare: Yes. So, I really found Burn Like Stars a really helpful course. Burnout is something that we talk about a lot. I think it’s a real potential danger in, in chaplaincy and and ministry in general. So anything that can help us flourish in our ministry is really, really helpful.

Gillian: So you’re a, you’re a lay hospital chaplain. Tell me, what is a typical day at the hospital look like for you? 

Clare: Okay. Well, I think to start with, no two days are ever the same. I always try to start my day with prayer. We have chapels at both hospitals, so, a few quiet minutes in the chapel is, is always a really good place to start. And to just prepare myself, I think, with, empty hands to receive whatever the the day will bring. 

Gillian: What do you mean, empty hands? What does that mean?

 

Clare: I think when I, when I go around the hospital or meeting, meeting patients, families, children, members of staff, I never know what they’re going to share with me. And it’s important, I think, to be ready to receive whatever comes. So I tend to want to offer the day to God and to say to God, whatever comes to me today, I’m here to receive that.

 

Gillian: And I guess no two days are the same in a hospital. So that kind of openness will help with with meeting whatever you’re, you meet.`

Clare: Absolutely. And it’s partly also about laying, whatever baggage I’m bringing to one side so that I’m free to, really listen and to really engage and encounter people wherever they may be in the hospital. 

Gillian: And, so do you just wander around or do you have particular people that you try to see, or is it just patient and staff…how does it…yeah, how do you decide? 

Clare: Good question. It varies between the two hospitals. At the, the women’s hospital, it’s a much smaller hospital. The majority of my work there is focused on the neonatal intensive care ward. If colleagues have visited patients the day before and there’s a particular patient, they’d like me to see, I will pick that up from our recording systems.

And often I’ve met families over a period of weeks. So there will be patients and families that I know and the children, babies who have been there quite some time. So I’ll have have regular families that I’ll want to see, want to visit. At the Children’s Hospital, it’s a much bigger hospital. Again, I focused mostly on the neonatal ward there. We have a neonatal surgical ward, but I walk the wards and I roam. 

Gillian: Oh, so tell me about that. You’re roaming a ward. How do you know somebody wants to talk to you? 

Clare: Often it’s about catching people’s eye as I walk around, I’m noticing things. I’m always looking and noticing. Obviously, if professionals are around the bed or children asleep or, you know, there’s a big family groups, then obviously it’s not appropriate to to approach that family at that time. But sometimes you just see a mum usually will just catch your eye and then that’s a good point to stop and talk. 

Gillian: And when that happens, do you have to explain the you know, if you say, ‘I’m a chaplain’ do people, get it? Is there sort of a literacy around understanding why you’re there in terms of the patients?

Clare:  Often it’s about explaining that, helping families to understand what chaplaincy is all about. Obviously, as a layperson, I’m not wearing a collar. So I have a badge that says chaplain, and I’ll explain that’s why I’m there and ask if families understand chaplaincy, so often that will lead to a a question, well are you from the church or are you a vicar, or? So I’ll say that as chaplains, we’re here for everybody, all faiths and none. The team that we work in is a multi-faith team. So I’ll say that we’re here for everybody and that we’re here to to listen and to support families because we know it can be a very difficult time. And often then I just wait and that’s where the empty hands comes in. I think the, the time and and presence just to stop and wait and see, see what the person wants to tell me. 

Gillian: And do you automatically say, can I pray for you? 

Clare: No

Gillian: Or do you…have people ask for prayer, I mean, how does the prayer bit come in? 

Clare: So we offer pastoral care first and foremost, just showing that we are there to support and we know that it’s really difficult and some families are in real distress. So the listening always comes first. Hearing that person’s story and each story is unique. When we sort of getting to the end of the the listening, I’ll judge then whether it’s appropriate to offer prayer and and I would say, you know, I could if you’d like a prayer, I could pray for you now or I can pray for you later in the chapel.

Gillian: Anyone ever said, no, I don’t want you to pray for me. 

Clare: It’s more rare than you might imagine. When families are in distress, they dig deep and ask the big spiritual questions. And often, you know, that’s when they might connect with something in their own faith journey, their family’s story, and they’ll, we’ll have those conversations that start – ‘I’m not religious, but…’

Gillian: They’re funny places, aren’t they? Hospitals. I mean, a bit like a airport waiting room. People are always passing through. You’re hoping to get out of there…they are sort of strange spaces, aren’t they? And I’m really struck by your…the chaplaincy role as a stabilising presence, waiting alongside with people who are on this really weird journey. 

Clare: Yeah, I think, we, we always aim to be that calm, non-anxious presence in the middle of the whirlwind that’s, that’s going on around families. And for the staff too, you know, staff in the hospital are living a very kind of frantic life often you know it’s very intense with some of the, the children, babies who have got very serious illnesses or surgery. And so it can be very busy. It’s often just about standing still and just being calm…

Gillian: and available to them.

Clare: and available, yeah.

Gillian: And thinking about the staff in the hospital, because patients, come and go in and out and I understand in the children’s hospital, some people, you know, they’re they’re there for a long time, but it’s a transitory phase in their life. The staff are stable. I remember, in COVID speaking to a hospital chaplain, and she said to me, in the first wave of the pandemic, my experience as a chaplain, she said to me was, you know, get out the way we’ve got this pandemic to deal with it. And in the second big wave, remember that big wave that happened after Christmas? She said to me, Gillian, we’re getting pulled in, you know, by the staff team. We can’t do this without you. And she, and she said there’s a marked shift in, health care perception of the values of chaplaincy because of the pandemic. Is that something that you’ve seen as well, that shift in understanding the role of chaplaincy within the health care setting? 

Clare: I think very much so. I actually started at the the hospital as a volunteer towards the end of the pandemic, before I moved on to the permanent staff. And we were very much discovering how valuable chaplaincy was to the staff given the pressures that they had been dealing with during the pandemic and valuing what we could offer to them as much as to the families and patients.

Gillian: So, Clare, I’d love to know a little more about your journey to become a chaplain. Why have you found yourself here? Tell us about your vocation and your journey to offer this ministry. 

Clare: I think the seeds of chaplaincy was sown a very long time ago, and I guess I didn’t know it at the time. My daughter, at the age of 12, had a, very sudden and quite serious brain tumour. It wasn’t cancerous, but it was in a very dangerous place. And it happened very, very quickly. So in the space of 24 hours, we’ve gone from being away at the church weekend, in fact, to finding ourselves blue lighted to hospital.

Gillian: Gosh. 

Clare: And I was one of those distressed parents. And the chaplaincy that we received during that stay in hospital, the chaplains stayed with us. And one of the interesting…ones of the activities that my my daughter did during that time she was in hospital was a little treasure box activity, and we’ve always had that. So that’s been always been part of our family story. And then she made an amazing recovery. But she’s always gone back there for for check-ups. And then when she became an adult, she went into midwifery and had had a baby. And when my little granddaughter was three days old, we found ourselves again, blue lighted back to the same hospital, which was again in the middle of of COVID. And because we couldn’t be together as a family, that my first thought was, who can I ring to help? And it was the chaplaincy team. So I reconnected with that team that had been part of our family’s story and then explored whether as a layperson, as a reader, I could possibly volunteer. So that was this the start my journey really into chaplaincy. 

Gillian: Yeah. So from your deep personal experience. 

Clare: It’s about giving something back and thinking, giving back to God, but giving back to the hospitals as well. 

Gillian: And also, Claire, it must… you know, what it’s like. I mean, you never…we both know that in pastoral ministry you never say, oh, I know what it’s like…

Clare: no, of course you don’t. 

Gillian: But we know that, that you, you’ve…How would you put it into words, sort of the wisdom and knowledge gained from your own experience in terms of how you chaplain others. 

Clare: Yeah, I, I think it’s about knowing that no two people stories are the same. So whatever I went through or my family went through, it’s going to be different for, for another family. But there are some things that are just the same, that sense of distress, of uncertainty. The uncertainty is the biggest issue that, that families are facing in these these really distressing situations. You know, what’s going to happen? What will be the outcome? And and often the medical staff, they don’t even know what the likely outcomes are themselves. It’s a kind of a journey that unfolds step by step and quite slowly. So it’s just I think about being there to help families, to make meaning. Yeah. 

Gillian: And it sounds like also your ability to tolerate uncertainty because we, we always I mean, you want to make things better. Everybody wants to make things better all the time. 

Clare: Yeah. 

GIllian: But yeah, it sounds like there’s a wisdom around being able to stay in the room when there’s unanswered questions and not being able to rush, rush into that. 

Clare: Yes, I think that’s that’s right, Gillian, I think we we talk about being comfortable with the uncomfortable as, as chaplains. And it’s an uncomfortable place to not know what the outcome is going to be.

Gillian: You’re in the children’s hospital. And that also covers sort of pregnancy and child loss and neonatal. Can you just, tell us a bit about the type of issues that you’re coming alongside? 

Clare: Well, I think particularly in neonatal work, I’m very much aware that I’m in a liminal space for some of the babies that are on the neonatal ward are really very much on the edge between life and death really hovering, you know, very premature and born with multiple complex difficulties. And that’s immensely challenging for for the families. And obviously, sadly, you know, hospitals are places where  children and babies don’t always survive. Those are the times when the work is at its most distressing. 

Gillian: And Clare, when you’re in those spaces, being perhaps the only one with nothing to do in inverted commas. You know, you’re not there with the syringes and the monitors and the…

Clare: No 

Gillian: and you’re holding in your body all this sort of uncertainty about the outcomes. What does that actually feel like for you?

 

Clare: I think you certainly feel it physically. And I think when someone is in front of you who is holding that, that trauma, when the family that you are with are visibly so distressed, and, and so, so broken by, by what’s happening. You do absorb it to some extent. You become very aware of your, your own body and being as trying to be as relaxed bodily as you can be, because that will then help the family to release, I think, what they’re experiencing…

Gillian: And what actually helps you…what do you do when you say keep your body relaxed? What do you actually doing to stay there? 

Clare: It’s simple things like being very conscious of, of breathing, of, holding myself in a very gentle way, being being actually quite gentle with my own body and maintaining that contact with the family as well. I’m very conscious, for example, to physically have open hands and to be aware of touch. Touch is really important. Obviously it’s something we all exercise with, with great care. Often I would just say, is it okay to put a hand on your shoulder? Sometimes I don’t ask…there are times when it’s the most natural thing just to to hold family. And often we will do that in a circle. I think there’s something very meaningful, particularly around a child who’s very unwell or dying of holding that child in a circle of love.

So we, so I often suggest that we make a circle. 

Gillian: So I had a close friend who, who, whose baby died at full term. So it was a stillbirth. And I was alongside her, as she found out or just after she found out. And I stayed with her, she gave birth, and it took took a few days. She was induced, and her partner was there. And I must say, the hospital were amazing and produced the memory things. And, I wasn’t there as a as a priest. I was there as a friend. But, of course, you know, you can’t turn these things off…

Clare: No. 

Gillian:  But what I was most struck by Clare, and and looking back on it was how much this person, my friend, almost sort of needed a witness. I think what she in part wanted or what I find myself doing was bearing witness to this life. I guess in that situation where there are so few memories of the person living, there’s no memories of the no person living. So I found myself. I was witness to this life that never was. And that’s what I’ve carried and continued maybe to be for her. In terms of your role in Chaplaincy, there must be a lot of that sort of witnessing of life that never was.

Clare: Yes, I think it is absolutely witnessing the life that has existed, however short that’s been. There’s something about the loss of hopes and dreams. But it’s actually saying this little life mattered and this little life will be remembered. It’s about honouring the life that’s been lost. But families may not know what they want in that moment in terms of a ritual, but some form of ritual will help with that.

So some pastoral prayers, some memory making of a spiritual kind. So tactile things are very helpful. I think having a holding cross, lighting a tealight candle, as we pray for that little life in the hospital, we, we have, a kind of a non-religious blessing that we can use with hearts, exchanging gold hearts and those forms of words, often are very simple. I’ve found families will remember more how you speak than what you say. It’s about having that gentle time and space to be able to say goodbye, but also to I think as, as you said, to witness and to, to honour that life.

Gillian: In our chaplaincy course at GoHealth, we do a whole module on, the kind of stories people tell when they’re ill or, stuck in hospital or, something else has gone wrong. A lot of that, based on the work of Arthur W Frank, he’s written a book called The Wounded Storyteller. The different types of stories people tell…The restitution narrative, which is, you know, God gave me this, and it’s going to make me stronger. That type of story you often hear. Or you’ve got the chaos narrative where people just…the whole thing is so confusing, nothing coherent is being told. And we also think about the quest narrative, the, the, the way people try to tell the story of their experiencing, experience, in order to find out who they are now. And in our course, we talk about chaplains as being master quest story tellers or story weavers.  

Clare: I love that.

Gillian: yeah…Yeah. It makes it sound. Yeah. Quest makes you think that’s dragons and castles involved, doesn’t it? But going on a quest, it was my experience of illness and finding out who I am now as a result of cancer and certainly if I’m with many other people, when you know life throws you a curveball and things don’t work out, you’ve got to work out who you are now. And I think talking to many chaplains in certain hearing, just a tiny bit of what you do in in Women and Children’s Hospital, you’re a master quest story weaver.

Clare, how does your faith help or shape your work in terms of helping people tell their story now, in the light of whatever it is they’re going through?

Clare: Well, I think the Bible is full of stories. You know, Jesus, ministry was, is story after story, isn’t it, of of healing. And I encounter people whose lives will be changed. So I think as a Christian chaplain in particular, it’s partly about bringing that presence, of Christ in, you know, again, seeing the shining, the light of Christ in the dark places and bringing, bringing that that in. And I think people’s stories are endlessly, endlessly fascinating and endlessly encouraging. I think my faith is often strengthened by what I hear from, the families that I, I spend time with. I meet families who’ve got the most amazing faith in the most difficult circumstances. Sometimes, you know, we will sit and we may be maybe say a Psalm together, or they’ll share a Bible story that means something to them that is giving them strength in that moment. So it’s not a one way street. It’s, it’s a sharing. It’s that mutual exchange.

Gillian: That’s, I mean, and and it’s very powerful. But of course, people leave hospital. And you, as soon as you can, you’re off. I wonder, do you often not hear the end of the story and and how do you cope with that? 

Clare: Yes, I mean, I think we do live with the unfinished and as as chaplains that’s something that I’ve learned to do. And, I think we’re always living with the unfinished. Sometimes obviously families will come back and and come back to visit with their children. And we we see them thriving and flourishing. And there’s very much joy in that. You know, I’ve not talked so much about the the joy, but I think it’s important to be able to live with the incomplete.

Gillian: That strikes me as really powerful Clare, living with the incomplete, living with the unfinished and, and of course, that’s true. We never know how it’s going to work out in our own lives or anybody else’s, but there’s, it just strikes me you are in these high intensity, high emotional, distressing situations surrounding a child’s bed with a circle, you know, as they’re passing away, it’s deeply moving stuff. I mean, you just told me the story of that, and I’m trying not to cry. And and yes, we live with the unfinished. It’s all in the glory, in the mystery of God. But you know, when you go home and you drive yourself home and you’ve left that behind, how do you process that? Because, yeah. How do you live with that? Oh, like practically.

Clare:  I think it’s important to lay it at the foot of the cross for me as a Christian, you know, to so that whatever I’ve received, talked about beginning the day with empty hands. So whatever I received, or whatever my hands are full of, it’s having space to actually to lay that at the foot of the cross. So I may do something like go and sit quietly and light a candle myself and pray for the families that I’ve met. I try very hard to build in slow days. So after a difficult day or after a chaplaincy day, to have a slow day, life doesn’t always work out like that. And that’s where I think self-care comes in. We have a saying that self-care is never a selfish act to chaplaincy, that in order to be able to give out and to be that available presence, we have to take really good care of ourselves.

Gillian: Is that physical as well. You talked about the spiritual act of laying it at the cross, but what about physically and emotionally.

Clare: Yes, I think it’s, it’s mind, body and spirit. But one of the things I sometimes do is write. I sometimes journal or even write a poem. But I like to do physical things as well. Swimming for me is one of my ways of releasing things, letting things go, just getting outside in the fresh air to have a walk or do some gardening or something very simple to do, something joyful with my family.

All of those things are helpful. And of course, my faith really keeps me grounded as well. So having rhythms of prayer gives that shape to my week.

Gillian: So Clare, we’re coming to the end now. And, we’ve talked a bit about the chaplaincy course. We work with a lot of chaplains in GoHealth, and the story I often hear from chaplains is they don’t feel their ministries understood by their local church, that chaplains feel that their ministry is less valued than parish ministry. What do you think the church could learn from the ministry of chaplains like yourself? 

Clare: I think there is a two-way conversation to, to be had, and I think the church is often very place based, you know, we’re, we’re anchored in a place. Whereas I think in in chaplaincy, it’s about taking taking God out into the world and actually bridging between the church and the wider world. So for me, I think the more that we can have people of faith as chaplains out in the world, in all walks of life, whether that’s in prisons, schools, hospitals, bus stations, wherever they may be, we will understand each other better and actually we’ll bring the world outside of the church, back into the the church.

Gillian: Yeah. 

Clare: So for example, the, the difficulties that staff in the NHS are facing, you know, we will have staff from the NHS in our congregation. So if we’ve got chaplains who are in that world, we can, it helps us to understand our congregations better. 

Gillian: Clare, thank you so much for joining me and having a conversation about your life, your vocation and your extraordinary ministry at the hospital. You’re a member of the GoHealth Community. So, you know, we pray for you anyway. But we’ll continue to pray for you and your team at the Children’s hospital there. 

Clare: It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Gillian: Thank you. 

So we’re launching, this month, an online solo version of our chaplaincy course where you can explore lots of aspects of being a chaplain, the Ministry of Presence and Healing, which Clare spoke about so powerfully.

We look at the theology of healing. We take a deep dive into trauma and loss, and we even look at the science of pastoral ministry. The chaplaincy course is designed for both experienced chaplains. Those at the beginning of their ministry and those exploring the ministry. And even if you’re just curious about the ministry, so if there’s something that has stirred your attention in this conversation, then do head over to our website and you will find the course there, and available from mid-April 2026.

A huge thank you to Rosie Dawson for producing this podcast, and to Wendy Lloyd for all her work on the podcast and the GoHealth Community. Until next time, thank you for listening and may you know God’s healing presence in your life and in the world.