We have updated our Birchmount Hospital phone lines. When you call through the main line (416-495-2400), you will need to add “7” when dialing an extension.

Spiritual and Religious Care

Multi-faith services to support your spiritual needs.

holding hands

Multi-faith services to support your spiritual needs.

At Scarborough Health Network, we are committed to offering spiritual care that is sensitive and respectful of our multicultural community.

Our Spiritual and Religious Care team includes Staff Chaplains, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Students, Roman Catholic Eucharistic Ministry, Lay Spiritual Caregivers, Faith Group Visitors (including Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist), and Chinese Ministry. The team also has strong relationships with community stakeholders and various community services.

Our Services

  • Spiritual and religious education
  • Clinical pastoral education (CPE) for students and clergy
  • Annual courses for Lay Spiritual Caregivers
  • Bereavement and Perinatal Bereavement programs
  • Mourning Rooms are available at both campuses and are accessible through a chaplain or security staff
  • Bi-annual Memorial services
  • Bereavement support groups (as announced)
  • Ecumenical/Multi-Faith Worship Services
  • Grief and Individual Support
  • Religious Festivals, including Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist
  • Information literature and Sacred writings

The Spiritual and Religious Care department has built a strong alliance with its community and utilizes local faith community leaders and community clergy to assist in providing faith sensitive services and on-call community clergy, as required.

The department appreciates the unique ministry offered by our local faith community leaders. They offer our patients and families the rituals and rites and cultural sensitivity that can only be provided by leaders in those communities.

Our staff and volunteers come from diverse religious, cultural and linguistic backgrounds; including Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek, Tamil, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu. Our mandate is to provide spiritual and religious care to the very diverse community that we serve.

Multi-faith and ecumenical worship services are conducted on a weekly basis. Annual festivals from Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist traditions are also celebrated across SHN. Multi-faith Worship Centres are open 24/7 for use by patients, families, and staff members. Worship services are broadcast through the state-of-the-art audiovisual system on our free Spiritual Care channel 76 at General and Birchmount. Inspirational music is played 24/7 on channel 76 on the TVs located in patient rooms.

Required training and mentoring is provided annually to interfaith and faith-based volunteers. Our religiously and culturally diverse volunteer group provides approximately 6,000 visits a year. For example, a volunteer Chinese Community Clergy and a Chinese Spiritual Caregiver who are fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English and to a lesser degree Hakka, Taoism and some Min-nan, visit Chinese patients weekly. The Roman Catholic Deacon visits patients on Mondays and Thursdays and Holy Communion is distributed by Eucharistic Ministers (volunteers) from local parishes. On-call Catholic priests are available 24/7 for emergency calls. Our Muslim, Hindu, and Chinese volunteers visit weekly.

If you would like to be a part of our volunteer training program, please contact the Spiritual and Religious Care department at 416-431-6270 for further information.

We offer Clinical Pastoral Education under the auspicious Canadian Association for Spiritual Care (CASC), affiliated with the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. For course details, please visit the CPE website or contact SHN’s teaching supervisor Ajith Varghese at avarghese@shn.ca.

How to Access Care

Birchmount
Main Floor
416-495-2535

Centenary
2nd floor
416-281-7225

General
Ground Floor, West Wing
416-438-2911 ext. 6270