Why has St Luke’s launched a new strategy?
We want to ensure the charity’s work is sustainable, so we took a long, hard look at what we do and why and how we do it.
We can now be clear on the healthcare support that we can offer individual clergy and their families and we can increase the scope of our wellbeing and mental health work, through the dioceses, which clergy tell us has a significant impact on their lives and wellbeing.
What will be different about St Luke’s work?
Well, our mission remains essentially the same as it has since 1892 – to play a leading role in improving the health and wellbeing of Anglican clergy and their families. We’re launching our new strategy to enable us to do this better, with three key intentions.
We want to reach more clergy, across a wider geographical area. We want to increase our focus on the mental health aspect of clergy wellbeing, an area of increasing importance in the Church.
Finally, we want to make the best use of our funds by supporting more lower-cost medical interventions which give disproportionately higher benefits, such as timely physiotherapy or treating cataracts.
Why now?
St Luke’s is convinced that positive clergy wellbeing is fundamental to the health of today’s Church community and the wider community. At its best, the parish provides a good model for how a community lives well together. And now is a time in the UK when an inspiring model of community is particularly needed.
Clergy struggle to fulfil their vocation and inspire their parish if their health, physical or mental, is compromised.
What else will change?
We’ve changed our working name to St Luke’s, as we felt our old name highlighted healthcare exclusively, and our offering is broader than that. And we’ve got a new, fresh look for the charity, on our website and all our communications.