Overview
This article provides instructions regarding closing a CarePortal request as well as useful information regarding when to use each reason for closing.
Intended Audience
Requesting Agency Leaders and Workers
Included in This Article
- Importance of Closing Requests
- Closing vs. Canceling or Pausing a Request
- How to Close a CarePortal Request
Importance of Closing Requests
The CarePortal Essential Reading for Requesting Agencies, which new agencies must agree to, includes their commitment to close requests in a timely manner. Here are a couple of reasons why closing requests is important:
- When closing a request, agencies are asked to give a 1-5 star review. This provides helpful feedback and data for CarePortal on how an agency is experiencing the platform, and how effective the tool is for serving families.
- Closing a request also asks additional follow-up questions about the long-term impact of the family that only the agency knows.
Closing vs. Canceling vs. Pausing a Request
Closing a Request
Requests that do not get responses will automatically close after 30, 40, or 50 days depending on the urgency level. If a response is made, however, whether by a community responder or a church responder, the request will remain open until the Agency Worker or Rep closes it. To close a request, the Agency Worker or Rep will follow the process outlined in the section below.
If any of the items on the request are confirmed by the Agency Worker or Rep to be met, the CarePortal system will ask some specific (optional) questions regarding the impact of the connection that was or wasn't made in the process of meeting the need, as well as feedback about the platform itself. These requests will be marked as "Fully Met" or "Partially Met" depending on whether all or some of the needs were confirmed to be provide by a local church partner.
If none of the items on the request are marked as met, the CarePortal system will not ask the follow-up feedback questions and, instead of asking for the Agency Worker to confirm the number of children and adults served, they will need to indicate the reason for closing the request before any needs were met. These requests will be marked as "Not Met" and be factored into the impact statistics of the CarePortal network.
Canceling a Request
Occasionally, it might be necessary to cancel a request. The Agency Worker who submitted the need has permissions in their dashboard to do this, as well as any Agency Reps assigned to the county the request was submitted in, any Agency Admins for the agency account overall, and also Regional Managers and Area Directors.
Canceling a request typically happens if a request lacks clarity, contains inappropriate or confidential information, or doesn't align with CarePortal's standards. It's worth noting that canceling a request does not affect impact stats, like the Percentage of Requests Met or Children Served. See the reasons for canceling requests below:
Pausing a Request
While it’s used less frequently, Agency Workers, Reps, Admins, Regional Managers, and Area Directors all have the ability to pause a request in the CarePortal dashboard. This can be helpful when a request needs to remain open but new responses need to be temporarily disabled—for example, to clarify details or address other considerations. The reason for pausing will need to be explained before the request is officially paused. Once clarity is achieved, any of these leaders can unpause the request.
While a request is paused, no new responses can be made to it. However, if resources have already been offered by the community, a local church can still step up to Take the Lead and claim those resources. This ensures the church can connect with the agency worker or rep who submitted the request and continue serving the family, even while the request is paused.
How to Close a CarePortal Request
To close a request, you can either:
- Click the "Close Request" button in an email you've received regarding a response to the request, or you can login to CarePortal directly, or
- Under the "Requests" tab of your CarePortal dashboard, click the hyperlinked request ID on the request you would like to close.
You'll notice a "Close" button in the top right of the page (shown below) that opens with the full details of this request.
When you click the "Close" button, a pop-up will appear for you to complete three simple steps:
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Identify who in your organization is/was working with the family
This will either be you or someone else within your organization. See screenshot below: -
Confirm the needs met and people served
If any updates are needed, you can make them here. If none of the needs on the request you are closing were met, you will need to provide a reason for closing from a dropdown selector of three options: time has passed and the request is no longer needed; time has passed, but the request is still needed; or the request was met by non-CarePortal resources. See screenshot below:
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Answer a few feedback questions
These are optional but deeply appreciated by CarePortal in learning how to continually improve.
Once any request is closed, it will be found in the "Submitted Requests" view of your Requests data table for future management or reference. Requests that have been met will also be found in the "Met Requests" view.
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