Pastoral Care FAQ

Find answers to common questions about case management, note confidentiality, shepherding logs, and automated absence alerts.

Who can see private pastoral notes?

To protect sensitive spiritual and personal information:

• Strict Role Boundaries: Private notes and visitation logs are completely hidden from general congregation members, volunteers, and ministry leaders.
• Authorized Viewers: Only the assigned household shepherd (the deacon or servant assigned to that family), the member’s registered Confession Father, and the parish Priests can view the notes history.
• Permanent Lock: Pastoral notes are not indexable by general search terms and cannot be exported in bulk CSV reports.

How do we change the priority level of an active pastoral case?

If a care case escalates (such as a member being admitted to the hospital):

1. Navigate to the Pastoral Care dashboard and select the active case.
2. Click the Priority dropdown (currently set to Normal).
3. Select High or Urgent.
4. Saving this change immediately moves the case to the top of the assigned shepherd’s and priest’s dashboards, and triggers a push alert to ensure immediate follow-up.

Can we adjust the consecutive absence threshold for automated cases?

Yes. Every parish can configure their own alert thresholds:

1. Navigate to Pastoral Care Settings > Auto-Cases.
2. Absence Threshold: Define the number of consecutive missed events required to flag a member (e.g., set to 3 consecutive missed liturgies or 4 missed Sunday School classes).
3. Save settings: The nightly alert script uses this updated value to identify at-risk members and generate care cases.

How do we assign a shepherding team to a family?

1. Open the family’s profile card in the directory.
2. Under the Care Details section, click Assign Shepherd.
3. Select a deacon, servant, or shepherding team from the directory roster.
4. Saving this link ensures that any automatically generated care cases for this family are routed directly to this shepherd’s personal dashboard.