Enhance Pastoral Care for Grieving Families with CareNote Workflows

Grief is a deeply personal journey, and providing thoughtful, structured support can make a world of difference to those experiencing loss. At CareNote, we understand the importance of compassionate care during such times, and our tools are designed to help churches and care teams implement workflows that ensure no one is left unsupported. Drawing inspiration from the Stephen Ministry’s Journeying through Grief booklets and structured workflows, here’s how CareNote helps you create a seamless grief care process.

Why Grief Care Matters

Losing a loved one is one of life’s most challenging experiences. Families often need support, not just immediately following the loss, but also in the months that follow. A structured workflow ensures that your church provides consistent, meaningful care while allowing volunteers and staff to work efficiently, focusing on what matters most—the people.

The Grief Care Workflow

Our grief care workflow integrates tasks, notes, and milestones to track the care journey. Based on the Planning Center Online Grief Care Workflow and enhanced by CareNote’s features, this process ensures every step is documented, and every need is addressed:

Grief Care Intake

• Start with an Update in CareNote. When you first learn of a loss within your community, record it as an Update on the profile of either the congregant reporting the loss or the individual who experienced the loss. This step serves as the foundation of the care journey for the grieving family.
• Capture essential details:
  • Who was lost (e.g., a family member, close friend).
  • The circumstances surrounding the loss (e.g., expected, sudden, or tragic).
  • Any immediate needs or concerns expressed.
• By documenting this information in CareNote, the team ensures all pertinent details are centralized and accessible for future actions.
• Once the Update is saved, it can be converted into a Care Request if additional support is required. This creates a seamless transition in the care process while maintaining historical tracking for transparency and organization.
• Additionally, Update in CareNote are searchable and categorizable, enabling the team to quickly retrieve information. For example, you can categorize the Update as a "Loss" and later run a keyword search to locate the profile and its related care history effortlessly.

Initial Contact and Needs Assessment

• After capturing the information in CareNote, the next step is the initial contact and needs assessment. While the Update may have been added by you or another team member, the responsibility for this step might fall to someone else on your care team.
• Within three days of the loss (ideally within 24 hours), a pastor, deacon, care volunteer, or even an administrative team member reaches out to the grieving family.
• This initial contact serves multiple purposes:
  • Determine whether the family is simply notifying the church of the loss or requesting assistance, such as a funeral, memorial service, wake, or other remembrance.
  • Identify any immediate needs or additional support required by the family.
• CareNote simplifies this process by allowing you to apply a predefined grieving workflow to the congregant’s profile. This workflow ensures that every step outlined in this blog is followed. Tasks such as assigning a team member to conduct the initial contact, scheduling services, or arranging for flowers and cards are automatically created and can be assigned.
• By using workflows, your team ensures that every congregant receives the same level of thoughtful and comprehensive care, with clear accountability and visibility for all steps.

Sharing Information with the Team

• Key details are shared with the care team via CareNote to coordinate tasks efficiently. CareNote’s built-in notification system ensures that team members are automatically alerted as information is entered or when they log into the platform to retrieve it.
• Additionally, team members can access this information by performing a simple search in CareNote or by reviewing the Daily Beacon Report, which consolidates updates and tasks into a concise summary. These features streamline communication, maintain confidentiality through ACL settings, and keep everyone aligned in providing care.

Meal Coordination and Practical Support

• As a church, you can come alongside those experiencing a loss by organizing practical support like meals. Using tools like Meal Train, you can coordinate meal delivery based on family preferences, scheduling details, and dietary needs.
• CareNote takes this coordination further by enabling you to explore other practical ways to support grieving families, such as providing childcare, arranging transportation, or simply offering companionship.
• CareNote’s care request management feature ensures responsibilities are clearly assigned and tracked. Importantly, CareNote supports your volunteers by offering three free volunteer accounts with every paid account. These email-only volunteer accounts allow you to assign care requests, responsibilities, and tasks—like meal deliveries—to congregation members who are eager to help but don’t require full system access. Volunteers can confirm assignment completion and provide updates directly within CareNote.
• This approach not only enhances visibility and coordination across your care system but also empowers your entire congregation to participate in meaningful ways. By activating both staff and volunteers, CareNote helps your church deliver care that is both rewarding for volunteers and beneficial for care receivers.

Grief Booklets Workflow in CareNote

• CareNote recently introduced workflow templates to help ensure consistent delivery of care across your care network. Our Grief Booklets Workflow is a prime example of how these templates simplify and enhance pastoral care.
• Stephen Ministry’s Journeying through Grief booklets serve as a cornerstone of this workflow. This series includes four booklets, each with accompanying letter templates for personalized communication. With CareNote, these steps are seamlessly integrated into the care process:
  • Sympathy Card: Sent immediately after the loss.
  • First Booklet: Sent three weeks after the loss.
  • Second Booklet: Sent three months later.
  • Third Booklet: Sent six months later.
  • Final Booklet and Encouragement Card: Sent 11 months after the loss to mark the one-year anniversary.
• After the memorial service or funeral, you can apply the Journeying through Grief workflow in CareNote to the congregant’s unified and comprehensive profile. CareNote automatically calculates and schedules the timing for each booklet and communication.
• Additionally, milestones play a crucial role in tracking care. You can record the loss as a milestone in CareNote, ensuring that a year after the loss, you’ll receive a reminder to follow up with the family. These reminders repeat annually until the milestone is removed, ensuring that families are consistently cared for and remembered.
• All care requests, tasks, milestones, notes, and steps are tracked within CareNote, with features like care and task reassignment and snooze options for added flexibility. If a task cannot be completed on its scheduled date, it can be easily postponed without losing visibility.
• By leveraging CareNote’s tools, your church ensures that grieving families feel supported and that no detail of their care journey is overlooked. This technology not only enhances pastoral care but also helps pastors and volunteers provide more meaningful and timely support to those who matter most in your community and care network.

Follow-Up Support

Monthly follow-ups are conducted to ensure the family’s ongoing needs are met and to assess their emotional well-being. Conversations may lead to recommending resources such as counseling, support groups, or spiritual guidance.

Documenting the Journey

CareNote’s robust note and milestone tracking ensures every interaction is recorded, creating a complete history that helps care providers maintain continuity and avoid duplication of efforts.

Leveraging Technology for Compassionate Care

CareNote simplifies the complexities of grief care workflows. By combining automation, tracking, and collaboration features, it empowers churches to provide personalized care while ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. The ability to integrate tools like Stephen Ministry’s booklets within the workflow creates a holistic approach to care, where spiritual, emotional, and practical needs are all addressed.

A Sacred Responsibility

Supporting grieving families is a sacred responsibility, and with CareNote, your church can navigate this delicate process with grace and efficiency. By implementing a grief care workflow inspired by best practices and enhanced by thoughtful technology, you can offer a meaningful ministry that brings light to those walking through the valley of loss.