Minneapolis Foundation CI Report – Interim

What has been most instrumental to your progress?

Expanding the capacity of key community stakeholders to aid Muslim community to provide spiritual care to individuals and families in need. The effort relied heavily on buy-in and investment from cross-sector institutions. These include Faith centers:(Mosque, Church, Synagogues); major healthcare systems in the metro (Hennepin Health, M Health Fairview, Allina, HealthPartners); Muslim civic organizations (Muslim-American Society of MN, CAIR-MN); public safety, prisons, jails and metro police. It required patience, trust and relationship building and was crucial to the maintaining authentic community voice in solutions. Taking the time for listening with respect was key.

We were able to apply and test our model of pre-CPE chaplaincy training for Muslim populations. It was important that we were able to develop and then experience an eight month training program with community leaders. Twenty one leaders completed the program and have maintained close relationship with our organization as we support them in placement into various medical, public safety and community-based chaplaincy roles. The receptivity of healthcare systems in engaging in the process validated the need for Muslim chaplains, and the response from participants to the curriculum was necessary to fine tuning and course correcting along the way.

A strong sense of community ownership was important in development, during promotion of and throughout the first year of training. Faith and civic leaders supported the model, including the training of Muslim men and women together to fill these important public roles. Recruitment for the second cohort has been well supported and we are accessing cohort members through several new advocates.

Key lessons learned

As we increased our direct connections to healthcare leadership, we were surprised by the persistent gap between the Muslim community and healthcare systems. Everyone we spoke to reported a need in their system to increase spiritual care for Muslim patients and families. Healthcare providers felt they currently had no effective route to solve this need. In surveys of healthcare Chaplaincy leadership, we received strong support for our Muslim pre-CPE Chaplaincy program. We are now more confident that we have identified a model of community empowerment, one where they feel strong ownership over a fundamental aspect of community. The community has asserted that they are the rightful determinants of who they will call qualified spiritual care providers.

We overestimated how easily or quickly we could move individuals into CPE. Due to barriers to Muslim spiritual care providers presented by some healthcare systems, we had to increase investments of time for negation and even expand routes to alternate systems such as public safety, university, non-hospital healthcare, and nonprofits like Red Cross. Many of the placements were initially offered as volunteer only, requiring some negotiation to place value on the service or in some cases, establish part time or consultant opportunities were satisfactory starting places.

Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving

The most important element has been collaboration. This is not to say we could ignore the others, but collaboration was and will be the essential element of this program. As we build the capacity of a community’s faith leadership, helping integrate these leaders into very public roles in multicultural institutions, we cannot alone lead the work. We have spent years meeting with major stakeholders locally, regionally and nationally to discuss this program. Muslim faith leaders needed to be kept informed, community leaders needed time to analyze the problem and our proposed solutions. Once we had organized the target community, we needed to develop institutional relationships with seminaries, universities, healthcare systems, spiritual care providers in prison and with police. Each needed to be kept informed, provided opportunities to shape the program, and whenever possible be given a chance to take ownership over some aspect of the Muslim pre-CPE Chaplaincy program.
Collaboration has been and will continue to be the life’s blood of the work. Failure to honor and engage stakeholders will likely result in resistance as the stakes are so high and so public.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

All three key elements (inclusivity, collaboration and resourcefulness) require flexibility from the many stakeholders – Bush and Minneapolis Foundations, Catalyst Initiative, ourselves, the 21 pre-CPE participants and the target placement systems. There has never been an initiative like this in the United States. Our research looking at chaplaincy programs in Europe showed that they, too, were seeking similar solutions. Without clear models for how to integrate two complex human systems of care, we have had to frequently complete formal and informal analysis of our efforts.
We have developed a plan for each of the eight trainings held throughout the year. As we learned more about participant interests and opportunities provided by stakeholders, we made significant changes to the curriculum. We learned that some healthcare systems feared we would become closely associated with their competitors. We scaled back some plans and increased relationships with others to assure all parties of our independence and openness to work with them.

Understanding the problem

We are very confident that we have identified a highly valued and appreciated community innovation. The feedback from participants has been profoundly positive. Having longstanding male faith leaders go through the program alongside women leaders has been a success. The hospital staff have spoken positively about the qualifications and qualities of the participants. We are confident that this first in the nation effort is a strong model and meets a critical community need.
It is still an open question as to whether the chaplaincy program can improve economic sustainability for families. Placement into systems went very quickly at the conclusion of the coursework in December 2019. 95% of participants were placed in institutions and were on track to earn income. In the early months of 2020 the bottom fell out of all healthcare systems and service roles due to the global pandemic. Covid 19 has been incredibly disruptive to the Chaplaincy program and it will be some time before we have clarity about next steps. At this time we are revising our timeline and will be in conversation with Catalyst and the Bush Foundation as thought partners regarding next steps.

If you could do it all over again…

We believed that to initiate this effort we would be dependent upon large institutions, such as seminary, to provide credibility to our efforts. We thought we had a good partner in United Theological Seminary (UTS), as they helped us with the initial surveys and met with us for one year prior to submitting our proposal to the Bush Foundation. We now see we were fortunate to be more independent as we found that political interests and economic struggles within the institutions would prove them less adaptable. Staff we had worked with at UTS were no longer in leadership roles and therefore unable to keep commitments. As we sought to maintain relationships with new leadership, we found them more resistant and no longer sharing our priorities.
Similarly, when it came to developing new opportunities with Muslim faith leaders inside healthcare systems, we learned that individuals who were initially eager to assist in placing Muslim Chaplaincy candidates required more time to navigate systemic barriers than had been anticipated.

One last thought

The impact of Covid 19 is significant and our efforts to partner and develop opportunities for our cohort members is in limbo. We don’t know yet what the future of our first cohort’s opportunities will be as healthcare systems have furloughed or laid off so many staff. We are adapting by delaying the second cohort until we have a better understanding and solid partnerships in the healthcare systems to support both first and second cohort members.
To support the first cohort we adapted the program to sustain engagement with healthcare and spiritual care leaders. Most chaplain contracts have been put on hold, but we have been able to secure smaller opportunities for these spiritual care leaders making videos on behalf of hospitals with accurate messaging about Covid 19. We have been able to provide some work making supportive calls, sharing accurate and timely messaging with our community members.
In this way, our cohort graduates are practicing their skills, building resumes and networks and continuing forward momentum. We remain focused on creating an environment where these Muslim pre-CPE chaplains will gain economic opportunities in a time of disruption.