Update on the cuts in BC

To our CAPPE colleagues across Canada,

It has been a difficult month for us in BC following the news of cuts in Spiritual Care within Fraser Health, BC's largest health region (by population). Fraser Health covers the greater Vancouver area from Burnaby to Boston Bar. Twelve acute care hospital chaplains were let go plus the full time regional Practice Lead position. This action has pretty much wiped out the profession in Fraser Health although there are still at least 2 chaplains working, as their funding comes from Residential and Hospice budgets. Most of the FH Chaplains are CAPPE members and they make up close to 1/4 of the BC membership. I've attached the Fraser Health Press release where you will see on page 2 that the work of Spiritual Care is expected to be done by Social Work and community volunteers. Neither Social Work nor the community were consulted about this decision.

CAPPE National has been very supportive to BC in helping us respond to this crisis. Brian Walton, our President has sent letters to our Minister of Health/Premier and to Fraser Health CEO. Doug Kellough our PPC Chair responded quickly and appointed Doug Longstaffe, the PPC rep from Ontario N.E. to help us with a strategic response. Doug L. has spent many hours in phone calls and preparing written materials for our use in staging a response that will hopefully lead to a reversal of this decision. Certainly we need to make sure that our other four health regions do not follow suit as they are all under pressure to reduce costs.

CAPPE BC has sent letters to the Minister of Health and all the MLA's. Some MLAs have briefed the Minister of Health and the Premier on the crucial role of Spiritual Care to patients, staff and families. So far the political response has been to stand by the Fraser Health decision with a "wait and see" approach in the hopes that any opposition will die down quickly. CAPPE BC Executive is teleconferencing weekly to coordinate our response strategy. We are supporting a letter writing campaign to the government and Fraser Health Executives with a fan out approach through CAPPE members to the community faith groups. The Multifaith Action Society in Vancouver and a group in Surrey, representing the large Sikh population have agreed to support CAPPE both with letters and as press spokespersons. We are also working with the Aboriginal groups in the Fraser Health area. Professional groups including Social Work and Physicians are protesting through letters and the press. CAPPE BC has chosen not to speak out through the press but rather to encourage others to speak out for us although we are responding when the press comes to us.

An on-line toolkit for information sharing has been set up to assist the letter writing campaign. To you our colleagues in other provinces we ask that you support us through your prayers and if you have helpful documents such as research statistics or journal articles that support our profession please send them to me for posting in the toolkit. Appropriate items can eventually be transferred to the national CAPPE website as a resource for us all.

All the work that CAPPE is currently doing to further establish our professionalism through spiritual care competencies, curriculum development, revisions to the specialist process and provincial college development becomes even more crucial to our future in health care.

If you have questions you can contact me as BC's Professional Practice Rep or Philip Crowell our Regional Admitting Chair who has also been appointed as our CAPPE BC Spokesperson to the media.

We are grateful for all your support and again, please remember to hold those who have lost their jobs in your thoughts and prayers.

Becky Vink,MCS
Chaplain / Spiritual Care Coordinator
Kelowna General Hospital
250-862-4114
Cell: 250-212-7683
Pager: 250-712-5107