PastoralCareInDatabase

• DavidMorgan wrote:

We are working to integrate the database with the pastoral care. A particular concern has arisen with people who specify a group as their pastoral support, as the database does not have provision for recording which group. There is a strong feeling that specifying a group should not be a substitute for have an individual person identified, that is that each group acting as pastoral support should be asked to identify a member who coordinates pastoral care in that group. Options would seem to be:

Other suggestions? Comments?

• JohnHurst wrote:

I rather like option 2. I certainly don't like option 5, and option 4 is only marginally better. With option 2, the question of extracting visitor lists is straightforward, so the real issue is the one of handling changes. I think a piece of SQL could be written to handle extracting visitor names by group, which together with the regular visitor list, should be sufficient for pastoral purposes. (I am willing to (try and) write the SQL.)

The one additional question that does occur to me is why not have two or more visitors per group? That would be a sensible division of labour where groups were large, but it does push the boundaries of ease of use a bit. But again, a judicious bit of SQL might fix that.

• DavidMorgan wrote:

The problem comes when Yan replaces Sue as pastoral care coordinator for Gold FISH, but Sue continues as a regular visitor. How do we identify which of Sue's visitees get transferred to Yan? All those with Group for pastoral support!! It is only if she continues as pastoral support person of another group, and some visitees belong to both groups, that we have a problem. Yes maybe that is rare enough to ignore.

• so what we need here is to extract by Group (where providing the pastoral support) the visitor name for all members of the group:

    select p.per_FirstName,p.per_LastName,c.c8 from person_per as p inner join person2group2role_p2g2r as g on p.per_ID=g.p2g2r_per_ID and g.p2g2r_grp_ID=5 inner join person_custom as c on p.per_ID=c.Per_ID;

That sort of works, although it tells you the visitor as a person ID (for me, e.g., visitor=Alanee=52, although not really - just testing!)

• JanClear emailed:

Hi Folks, Jenny and I are preparing a letter to send to all groups who are providing pastoral care-mutual support to people within our congregation. We also believe that there should be a person taking on this responsibility. Many people who were doing this in the past have decided that they won't continue so we need to update our records. This information would also be good for Laurel Muir in her role as Supportive Care Link co-ordinator.

• WarrenGreenwood emailed:

I prefer option 2. A person or persons provides pastoral care, not a group. Not everyone in a group participates in pastoral care, usually certain people have that special gift. Yes it is a gift they share, and a group does not have that gift, only people.

David, John it may be possible to use the text field in notes, and if we use a given syntax, the name in that syntax may be able to be used to list the group providing care.

But for me, it is a person or persons, never a group who give care.

• JennyVass emailed:

I would like to see the "group" field specified eg Grp-uniting voices or grp- UCAF as some people who have indicated group pastoral support are in several groups, and although they indicated to us which one they want their support from, there is currently no way of highlighting this on the data base. I would be OK with a pastoral rep from the group being indicated, but this volunteer position often changes from year to year making annual changes necessary, and anyone accessing the data base to contact a pastoral rep wouldn't initially know which group that person was representing.

• DavidMorgan

On the last point Jenny, if it is ultimately a person who does pastoral care, as Jan & Warren argued, does the group matter? Which groups change pastoral care person regularly? Adult group rotates its convenors. I would have thought that most others changed rarely.

• DavidMorgan

I have extracted a list of "visitors", the people for whom they provide pastoral contact and the method of care from the current database, and displayed it at http://wiki.gwuc.org.au/gwuc/TestPageDavid. This can be updated automatically & quickly. Of course it misses all those people who currently have "Group" but no Visitor specified.

Another complication with trying to automate the Care-Group-to-Visitor link is that some groups may have multiple care givers, eg the Morgans & the Emmss are down as caring for each other, within Gold FISH. If every member has a person visitor (Carer), then we can identify the members who need a new visitor when the group visitor changes. A Care giver is a Care giver; the fact that the care is given by common membership in a group is secondary but useful to know, which group hardly matters.

Outcome

• The Pastoral Contact field (c3) in http://in.gwuc.org.au/PersonCustomFieldsEditor.php is a menu that includes Group.

• The Group field (c15) is a popup menu, set manually.
• The Visitor field (c8) is a popup of the database group Visitors. New visitors need to be added to this group.

• GwucIgor has a script to generate a list of all members with these fields in the form:

Morgan  20 Alimar Road, GW, 3150.   Phone: 9560 8024
        David   Group   FISH - Gold     Cynthia Chin
        Sue     Group   FISH - Gold     Cynthia Chin

• Lists sorted by other fields, eg visitor, are also possible.