End of an era for hospital chaplain corps

A Santa Rosa nonprofit group that has accompanied Sonoma County families literally from the cradle to the grave soon will shut its doors.

Hospital Chaplaincy Services since 1969 has trained volunteers to offer prayer, counsel or simply conversation to patients and families from any religious background - or none at all - at hospitals and nursing homes throughout the county.

Though the agency's volunteers are known in the hallways and hospital rooms as "chaplains," the men and women of the chaplaincy corps come from all walks of life - nurses, teachers, therapists or even gardeners, said Barbara Yungert, the agency's program director.

"It's all kinds of people who are looking to be of service," Yungert said. "They want to support people who are suffering."

That support may come in the form of a reassuring word before surgery, a hand to hold in the waiting room, a shoulder to cry on in times of crisis. Often it will have little to do with religion, but it always has everything to do with the comfort provided when one human being connects with another.

Some of the four dozen or so chaplains will continue to offer that support after the program ceases to exist. But by the end of June, the agency that specializes in "listening from the heart" will close its doors.

In a letter to supporters, Yungert and board President Susan Badger said the decision to close "was a difficult one."

But, "we have sadly come to the conclusion that the world around us has changed and our mission, while still important, no longer has a viable place in our community."

While money has always been a factor in the tenuous existence of Hospital Chaplaincy Services - its staff has ranged from as many as four people to the current three-quarter time of Yungert - the closure is not strictly about financial resources.

It's about human resources, too.

"It's hard work being a chaplain," said Yungert. "It's a real challenge to go from the days where people really need you to the days where they kick you out of the room. You have to be able to roll with it, from sitting with a patient who just needs someone to listen to helping a family honor a death, or deal with the loss of a newborn baby.

"It's draining."

While the agency consistently has plenty of volunteers willing to take its 40-hour training course, it is seeing fewer who are able to stick with the program after meeting their initial 100-hour service commitment.

"Many of us are in our 50s - in that 'sandwich generation' where we're taking care of our parents and taking care of our kids," Yungert said. "It's hard to find three hours a week to take care of others, too."

Of course, the need for hospital chaplaincy services won't disappear when Hospital Chaplaincy Services does.

"It's really unfortunate; it's a shame," Sutter Medical Center spokesman Mitch Proaps said. "This is an agency that has fulfilled a needed role, especially for us as a secular institution. Patients sometimes feel the need for spiritual support, and this is the way we've been able to provide it."

In addition to Sutter, Hospital Chaplaincy has contracts to provide its services at Kaiser, Palm Drive, Sonoma Valley and Healdsburg hospitals, along with several skilled nursing facilities. Yungert said "a great portion" of the volunteer chaplains want to continue their work after the agency closes, and several hospitals have expressed interest in folding them into their in-house volunteer programs.

Still undecided, however, is how future chaplains will be trained, and what will happen to the agency's popular "Sing-along 'Messiah' " fund-raiser, which has been staged each Christmas for the past 25 years in conjunction with the Santa Rosa High School Choir.