ABSTRACT
The decisions taken by the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust constitute a significant case study in the circumstances of chaplaincy. The trust was in grave financial difficulty, and the minutes recorded the receipt of notification by the Strategic Health Authority that Worcestershire had formally been categorized as a 'turnaround trust'. The changes which occurred to chaplaincy under the first decade of New Labour were extensive and, in the case of the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, came to be characterized by conflict in the public arena. One of the responses to the crisis in Worcestershire took the form of a systematic study of chaplaincy staffing levels across England. The research by Theos, 'the public theology think-tank', attempted to answer the question of how accurate the suspicion was 'that hospital chaplaincy in the NHS as a whole has been subject to serious cuts'.
