Rachel Allen, Spiritual Care Advisor/Chaplain

It can be quite the experience to start a new job filled with many questions and unknowns. But what happens when you start a new job in the middle of a pandemic? 

Rachel Allen, a new spiritual care advisor/Chaplain, has had to do just that. Rachel started with NELFT on 6 April this year, and has taken on some work to support and visit patients with COVID-19 who are currently with us, as well as the mental health and community hospital spiritual care work she was initially hired for. 

“I’ve worked previously in an acute general hospital and a hospice, as well as working in mental health spiritual care,” said Rachel. “So I guess I’m finding the elements of my previous experience have come in handy in this role in ways I thought they might not.”

Previously Rachel worked as a parish vicar in Lancashire, where she got her first experience in mental health spiritual care visiting a local psychiatric unit, and then a mental health unit. It opened her eyes to the fact that mental health spiritual care jobs were in existence, and so she applied and got a role in a trust in Berkshire followed by jobs in acute health care and a hospice.

For Rachel, the moments that will stand out in her memory from working during COVID-19 will be, “seeing first-hand the distress of people unable to see their families whilst in hospital, and have maybe seen their family last when they were being wheeled on a trolley into intensive care in a general hospital.”
“Those moments, of just sitting with people experiencing things that are unimaginably hard and trying to be kind, is what I’ll remember.”

Rachel has a unique opportunity to support patients, and staff, in regards to their spiritual care.
“Spiritual care is about supporting people in their search for meaning or hope or purpose – would be a classical definition. But I think it’s also about being alongside people when they can’t find any of those things for themselves because of their illness,” she said. “Sometimes you’ll go on a ward and the majority of the ward would like some time with you. It’s very much about helping people to see that they’re likeable and loveable. And giving people a sense that, whoever they are, they have value.”

Rachel has also been able to see first-hand the work of NELFT colleagues during COVID-19. She’s had conversations with staff in the corridors, getting a picture of how things are for them, as well as seeing them at work when she makes her rounds through the wards.

“I’m constantly blown away really by the courage and resilience of staff who’ve been redeployed into areas which are not in their comfort zone, and all of the changes that entails for people,” she said. 
According to Rachel, spiritual care is important for patients in different ways, and in different situations. During this time especially, there are those who are anxious and who will greatly benefit from having someone who will listen to them.

“On the mental health side of things, spiritual care is very often about supporting people to have a healthy, positive relationship with themselves as much as a positive relationship with whatever they believe in beyond themselves,” said Rachel. “Everybody needs to be heard and seen when they’re feeling frightened and desolate and they don’t have their family and friends around them.”