The first in a series of spotlights on the Defence Leadership and Business Group (DLaB) focuses on the Armed Forces Leadership Centre (AFCC).
AFCC has recently achieved accreditation with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) for their modern professional chaplaincy courses.
The Intermediate Chaplaincy course now offers a CMI Level 5 certificate in Leadership and Management while the Advanced Chaplaincy Course provides a CMI Level 6 award in Leadership and Management Practice.
This underlines AFCC’s commitment to delivering its core business -the provision of operationally focused through-career training courses, aimed at professional and personal development.
Equipping chaplains for a tri-service environment
Located in the Defence Academy’s historic Beckett House, AFCC has responsibility for the delivery of faith and belief courses for serving personnel and civil servants across defence.
The Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre currently identifies several key outputs:
- a tri-service focused syllabus that ensures chaplains are best equipped to work in the joint forces’ environment
- a NATO focused syllabus that can equip chaplains to work effectively in NATO and multi-national settings
- the development of training material for a multi-faith and multi-belief chaplaincy, including the anticipated introduction of non-religious pastoral officers to defence in 2025
- a commitment to facilitating academic research to sustain and improve the professional development of tri-service chaplaincy cadres, and those of our allies
- the opening of AFCC courses to international delegates, to enable the two-way sharing of best practice with our allies
- training international chaplains. Over the past year we have designed and delivered various iterations of Phase 2 training and Phase 3 Command Training for our international chaplaincy partners. Areas studied include spiritual support and ecumenical working; the deployed context (tactical, operational and strategic chaplaincy); ethics and the moral component of fighting power; moral injury; spiritual, mental and physical resilience; resourcing ministry; models of pastoral care; casualty notification; bereavement, loss and funerals; field training; the operational cycle; planning for deployment and the administration of pastoral care
- the strengthening of AFCC’s academic relationships to create new, synergistic relationships with globally recognised universities and military institutions to support mutual training, education and research
Established in April 2022, DLaB is a unique and integrated defence asset focused on human capability, which develops the ‘Leadership, Business and Spiritual Edge’ required to maintain the strategic and operational advantage.