Lori Hannasch from St. John Neumann:
We began making our outreach calls on March 20th using volunteers from our pastoral care ministries who all have E3. We provided each caller with a spreadsheet of 15 individuals along with training materials, a call script and resource pages (which includes parish and community information). The callers are given only the individuals name and phone number. Our spreadsheet has them color code their conversation as RED, YELLOW or GREEN. I use this method in Curanotis (my pastoral care database) and I find it helpful. If callers feel someone is in a RED situation, they notify me immediately. If someone is YELLOW, they note this on their spreadsheet and that individual receives a little extra follow up TLC (extra phone calls, cards and bulletins mailed, etc.) Some examples of RED or YELLOW would be someone needing food, medication, extra spiritual support, etc.
We continued our outreach efforts utilizing other ministries as well. We also had parishioners stepping up who now have free time due to COVID-19 and wanted to assist with the outreach efforts but they were either not E3 or were in the process. I reached out to Julie Crisp (Program Liaison for the Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment). She advised me that as long as callers were only making check in calls, E3 was not necessary. For any volunteer callers that are not E3, we as a parish have them sign the Code of Conduct before they are given a list. I vet these volunteers and some are comfortable making the outreach phone calls and others are better suited to assist us with making the homemade cards that we are sending out to some of our more isolated parishioners.
All callers, in their training materials (and they are also reminded in my note when the information is emailed out), are told that should any problems arise (classified RED - people needing further assistance, help with food, medication, etc.) they are to contact me immediately and we’ll connect with the individual and take it from there. To date, we have surprisingly had fewer people in the RED or YELLOW category than we were anticipating. It has done my heart good to hear of all the ways family and friends are stepping up to help out individuals. We do have a partnership with The Open Door food shelf to assist us where there are needs.
We ask the outreach callers to make three attempts to reach the individuals. If they are unable to reach the them (number no longer in service or no voicemail), we then send the individuals a ‘checking in from SJN’ email or, if no email address is on file, we are snail mailing them a letter.
We are finding that everyone is so appreciative of their faith community connecting with them during this time of distance and suspended Masses. And not only is it a great way to stay connected but a side bonus is that we are cleaning up our database. We are finding many who no longer have a landline, have moved out of the parish, or have a new email or physical address. We began our outreach to households with parishioners over 70 years old and have continued working our way down by age. We are currently reaching out to households in their 50’s and plan to continue our outreach downward as we are able during this time of crisis.
On a side note – I have continued to drop off things like palms, bulletins, letters and note cards to our senior living facilities on a regular basis. They have been so appreciative to have us continue connecting with them in this small way during this time of isolation.
