East Bay
365 Lennon Ln, Suite 140
Walnut Creek, CA 94598
Tel : (925)-930-9373

Sacramento
3841 North Freeway Blvd, Suite 210
Sacramento, CA 95834

San Francisco Bay
39899 Balentine Drive, Suite 161
Newark, CA 94560
510-438-9602

With three hospice programs in the Northern California area, VITAS cares for 1,000-plus patients and families in this ethnically diverse area and offers the opportunity for ministering to people from many different cultural and religious backgrounds. Students may be placed in any of the three VITAS programs, each offering several clinical settings for spiritual care: visiting in private homes, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and inpatient hospice units.

CPE students function as chaplains and members of a hospice interdisciplinary team. They are supervised not only by the CPE program but by the VITAS management team and mentor-chaplains. Verbatim reports of pastoral visits are presented along with VITAS documentation. Seminars focus on palliative care, family systems and theological reflection through the use of stories, interpersonal relationships, grief dynamics, etc. Individual and group supervision fosters personal and professional growth.

Tuition: $500. A $100 deposit fee is required upon acceptance to hold a place in the program. The deposit is applied to the total tuition.

Lujuan Thompson is an ordained Interfaith minister with an endorsement to chaplaincy from the Church of Religious Science.  She is presently a supervisory candidate in the certification process of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education and is actively pursuing certification as a full supervisor. Lujuan did her CPE residency and supervisory training at the Institute for Health and Healing of the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. The Institute continues to be an innovator in educating interdisciplinary teams to integrate spirituality and health (including alternative modalities) in treating the whole person.  In her supervision Lujuan draws on the principles of practical theology, believing that as students ground theology in relation to everyday life, they find the divine within themselves. Then they are more capable of seeing and drawing forth the divine in others.  She creates a learning environment where students share the wisdom of their cultural and religion/spiritual traditions, as well as open themselves to learn from the wisdom that others bring to the peer relationship.  Lujuan then helps students in learning to speak a language of spirituality that can touch all hearts.