Are all hospital chaplains employed by the NHS?

[Ethel]

Silly me - I thought chaplains were paid for by the relevant church/temple/mosque and so on, and provided the hospital chaplaincy as part of their parochial duties.

It seems I was wrong, having stumbled across this:

http://www.jobs.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/vacdetails.cgi? search_db_no=2&selection=911671612&vn=70

[Lonnie]

Hi Ethal, I thought so too, which is how it should be, this is just another excuse to waste taxpayers money. I'm sure if they were to ask, the Sikh community would supply one.

[buildersmate]

Quite a lot of background to it here. http://www.addenbrookes.org.uk/serv/nonclin/ch apel/role_chaplain.html Its been around since the NHS was formed in 1948 and obviously mushroomed to include other faiths in more recent years. Since the role is one of counsellor, far better to take the faith bit out of all the job requirements, then the NHS could make it non-religious in its scope. Known as making something 'standard', rather than buying 'bespoke', its a recognised way of achieving better value for money.