Before placement
Role clarity, physical and psychosocial risk, provider and host expectations, access boundaries and reporting pathways.
A department of Spirit Led Institute
The Centre for Chaplaincy & Spiritual Care Safeguarding™
Concerned with the safeguarding, structural protection and restoration of chaplains, spiritual care practitioners and pastoral carers in institutional and organisational settings.
The Centre looks in two directions. It cares for the practitioner, and it asks about the conditions surrounding the work — the placement, provider, host institution, role design, accountability, supervision, voice and exit — so that people are not left carrying risks and contradictions that belong upstream.
Who safeguards the chaplain?
Why the Centre
Safeguarding the person, not only preparing the person
Safeguarding in chaplaincy, spiritual care and pastoral care cannot only mean preparing the practitioner to work safely with others. The practitioner must also be safeguarded.
“Don't assess only the chaplain for suitability for the placement. Assess the placement for suitability for the chaplain.”
Is the environment safe enough physically, psychosocially, relationally and structurally? Are responsibilities clear? Can the practitioner raise legitimate concerns without penalty? Is organisational responsibility being displaced onto the individual practitioner?
This is not about making chaplains more resilient or better able to tolerate unsafe conditions. It is about systems that are fit for the human beings asked to serve within them. The Centre is constructive, not anti-institution.
The Whole Journey
Questions worth holding before, during and after service
During service
Moral strain, role conflict, supervision, safety, institutional pressure, critical incidents and speaking-up pathways.
When something isn't right
Mapping what is happening, locating responsibility, and distinguishing practitioner issues from provider, host and system issues.
After service
Dignified exit, grief, responsibility release and restoration — with no assumption that healing requires a return to the work.
For Chaplains, Spiritual Carers & Pastoral Carers
Resources you can use today
Free, practical and reflective resources gathered in one place — pastoral conversations, reflective practice, safeguarding and boundaries, spiritual care and practitioner wellbeing.
Open the resourcesFoundations
Writing that underpins the Centre
Who Safeguards the Chaplain?
The structural argument underpinning the Centre — a book by Sharon Mackenzie.
Find it on AmazonThe Balm of Gilead for Chaplains
A restoration and healing companion for chaplains and spiritual carers — free to read.
Read freeFoundational Principles
There is a human being here.
Safeguarding starts before the chaplain crosses the threshold.
Access is entrusted, not owned.
The purpose of chaplaincy cannot be the preservation of chaplaincy.
Continued access cannot be purchased with the chaplain's silence.
Calling does not cancel employment rights.
Compassion does not remove WHS obligations.
Confidentiality does not mean organisational silence.
The chaplain should not be the place where organisational contradictions are resolved.
The chaplain will not be required to carry what belongs to the system.
Scope & Boundaries
The Centre is an educational and reflective department of Spirit Led Institute. It offers writing and free resources; it does not provide individual services, investigations or casework.
It is not a regulator, legal service, emergency service, clinical service or workplace investigator, and it is not a substitute for qualified WHS, legal or mental-health advice. It makes no allegations about any named provider or institution.
