Overview
The safety of children and families has always been a top priority for all members of the CarePortal network. With this in mind, all users must be logged into a free CarePortal account in order to respond to a request.
Despite this security enhancement, church leaders can still forward request emails to individuals or ministry teams who are not part of their church’s internal CarePortal Response Team yet.
Included in This Article
- Church Settings to Make Forwarding Request Emails Work Best
- Responder Experience of Creating a Password and Becoming Affiliated with Their Church
Church Settings to Make Forwarding Request Emails Work Best
Each church whose point people want to manually forward request emails to a list of individuals not in their church's Response Team should consider the following Church Settings. These settings will define a simple, consistent and predictable process of guiding individuals to respond as representatives of their church.
- Auto Approve Members: 'Yes' Recommended
Yes: When a new user selects their church in the process of creating a CarePortal account, they will immediately become affiliated to that church by being added to the church's internal Response Team. All responses to local requests from this user will remain associated with their church unless the church removes the responder from the Response Team. The Primary Point Person for the church will receive an alert making them aware of the new Response Team member.
No: The new responder will not have the immediate ability to respond to the request that's been forwarded to them as a representative of their church until they've been manually approved by the primary point person. Until they are approved, the responder will remain unaffiliated with any church and be noted as a "Community Responder" on their responses. (Note: This option enables for a church to customize the welcome email a new Responder would receive.)
With PP Email: New responders would be able to immediately become affiliated with their church only if the church leader who forwarded the request email included or had previously given the email address of the church's primary point person, which acts as a password for new responders with this setting. - Respond to Point Person: Preference for Church (see explanation below)
This setting is based on whether or not the church's point person would like to be involved as the liaison for the responses their church makes as a measure of training, logistical coordination, and consistency.
No: The Primary Point Person would like to allow responders associated with their church to make responses directly to the caseworker who entered the CarePortal request.
Yes: The Primary Point Person would like all responses from their church members to come to them first so they can make a single, official response to the caseworker who entered the CarePortal request. The connection between caseworkers and individual responders could be made manually or the point person can continue to be involved as a coordinator.
Please note: Some agencies strongly prefer that churches not auto approve new members and allow responses directly to the caseworker as a way of ensuring church responders are trained and approved before having access to local families and kids in crisis. Please talk to your Regional Manager about this to gain a better understanding of the local agency preferences for your area.
Responder Experience of Creating a Password and Becoming Affiliated with Their Church
When a church member receives a request email that's been forwarded to them by a CarePortal point person from their church, they will see the description and needed items for the request, as well as the option to respond to the request with the "Yes, I Can Help!" button.
Note: Request emails to church leaders include actions that only church leaders can complete (Activate My Church, Engage Community, and use Church-to-Church). When point people forward their request emails, these options will still be seen by others who receive the email. If the church were to add their responders to their Response Team, a church leader could use the "Activate My Church" button in this email to automatically notify their Response Team, giving them only the options that Responders can complete (Respond, Commit to Pray, and Follow).
When someone clicks "Respond" in this email, they are directed to the request's public page (shown below), where they can see any previous responses to the request and confirm their ability to help with the "Yes, I Can Help!" button.
- New User Sign-Up: Step 1
The user will immediately be asked to enter their email address to look up their account, or get one created. If they are a brand new user, they will be asked to enter their name, zip code, phone number, and select a password for their account.
- New User Sign-Up: Step 2
Based on the zip code provided in Step 1, the CarePortal platform will suggest joining the Active Community local to the user as well as other Active Communities around the US that have been identified as having a "Critical Need".
This step is completely optional – they do not need to join an Active Community if they do not want to. A "Skip" button is provided at the bottom of the page. - New User Sign-Up: Step 3
The new user will have the chance to find and join their church's Response Team based on the Church Settings decided by the leaders (above). This step is also optional, however, skipping this step would prevent the new user's responses from being associated to their church.
Once the user has finished creating an account, it will take them back to the Request Details page, showing in the top bar that they are now logged into CarePortal. They can now click the “Yes, I can help!” button again to complete their response to the request.
For future requests, this user will only need to use their email address and password to log in and respond as a representative of their church. It will not take them through this process each time.
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