The Chaplaincy at D&C Police is a highly valued, visible and integrated service with chaplains visiting police stations, control rooms, custodies and work closely alongside operational police officers across both counties. Chaplains also work collaboratively with other internal services including Wellbeing and Trauma Response Incident Management and are involved in multiple Force projects such as G7, police welfare van deployments and Neighbourhood Policing Week.
The Chaplaincy is led by the Force’s Lead Chaplain, Rev Jonathon Ross-McNairn who is a police staff member (4 days a week) and coordinates the team currently comprising 25 volunteer chaplains.
The Chaplaincy is a part of the Citizens in Policing team within the Force’s Prevention Department. The Chaplaincy also comes under the umbrella of Police Chaplaincy UK which provides a national structure and overview for the support the Chaplaincy provides at a local level.
The vision for Chaplaincy within Devon & Cornwall Police is generous and inclusive. We aim to serve all within the police family regardless of whether staff and officers are people of faith or no faith. The Chaplaincy vision and focus is founded on three pillars of providing (1) Pastoral (2) Spiritual and (3) Religious Support. We work closely with Citizens in Policing, Corporate Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and Positive Action in Policing colleagues.
It is a priority for the Chaplaincy to serve the demographics and locations in which it is sent and to that end we would like to encourage applications from a wide range of people from different backgrounds and we are especially keen to attract people from different faiths or no faith and other beliefs and worldviews, who may share an interest and passion for chaplaincy work. It is not a pre-requisite that you have any experience of working within the police but some chaplaincy experience would be helpful.
All chaplains are fully vetted and uniformed in order to aid visibility and integration into the policing family.
There is also the opportunity to volunteer as a chaplain in other geographical locations across Devon & Cornwall and in some cases based on ‘buddying up’ with another chaplain in order to share the time commitment of visiting police stations.
We are also interested in speaking to people who may wish to volunteer some time to be an ‘on call’ or ‘peripatetic’ police chaplain (i.e.: being available for emergencies and for other pre-agreed scenarios) but with no ongoing expectation to visit a dedicated police station.