Overview
For decades, higher education; becoming teams that are present on campus but at the same time a service not necessarily utilized like it could be. It has been retained and used mainly for addressing pastoral and religious needs but with census data showing a shift in the makeup of religious beliefs in the UK. As a result, chaplaincy demand is changing and there has been growing need for specialized support for people of other faiths; particularly Muslims. With greater focus in higher education on addressing inclusive practice, chaplaincy is in a phase of development and change to adapt to this new status quo.
At the same time, higher education has, in recent years increased its efficiency in addressing the pastoral needs of its communities through strategic leadership and changes through building better student services; moving to an inclusive model serves students and staff well.
Based on this, the questions this chapter aims to address are how chaplaincy services that are often managed by religious leaders can move towards change and development without losing their unique pastoral service.
We consider the opportunities of embedding chaplaincy services throughout university structures beyond their current capacity through strategic planning and working in a new and wider capacity alongside other campus services and through the lens of inclusion and religions and beliefs as a protected characteristic.
The incorporation of strategic planning and how to use key performance indicators in the Muslim chaplaincy at the University of Sheffield are presented as a working example and model. This focuses on how moving chaplaincy towards productive and measurable change that can be embedded into inclusive practice across universities can be planned and implemented as well as retaining the pastoral chaplaincy model albeit in a slightly new form.