Family Portal Readiness Assessment: Preparing to Launch your Community's Family Portal

We've prepared this guide to walk you through everything you need to know to get ready to launch your Family Portal!

This guide has 3 sections to set you and your team up for success as you prepare to launch your Family Portal:

• Understanding What Information Will Appear in the Family Portal
• Ensuring Information is Ready to Share
• Establishing an Internal Launch Plan
• Establishing Ongoing Support Processes

Understanding What Information Will Appear in the Family Portal 👀

As your community prepares to roll out the Family Portal, it’s important to consider the information that will be shared with families and ensure that it is accurate and up to date in Welbi. Information from your Welbi site will appear in three sections of the Family Portal: 

1. Programs

• The Programs section displays all scheduled programs (group, 1-on-1, and self-directed if applicable) for their loved one’s Level of Care or Home Area. 
• The following information will be displayed for each program: 
  • Program title
  • Date, start time &  end time
  • Location
  • Facilitators
• The following programs will not appear in this section:
  • Announcements 
  • Unscheduled programs (i.e., created on the Attendance page) 
  • Canceled programs
• During the last week of a month, Family Portal users will be able to see scheduled programs for the first week of the following month (e.g., during the last week of Sept 2024, they'll be able to see what's planned for the first week of Oct 2024). A month’s full calendar only becomes available once the month has officially started (e.g., Oct 1st 2024).

2. Participation

• The Participation section displays all program attendance entered for the resident(i.e., for scheduled or unscheduled group, 1-on-1, and self-directed programs), including:
  • Engagement level (i.e., actively participated, passively participated, disengaged, declined, or unavailable)
  • Program title
  • Date & start time
  • Location
  • Facilitators
• Attendance notes entered in Welbi will not appear in this section. 

3. Community Directory

• 

  The Community Directory section displays contact information for staff members of your choosing, including:

• • • Full name
    • Job title
    • Phone number
    • Email address
• You can configure who shows up in the Community Directory in the Employee section of your Welbi settings

Ensuring Information is Ready to Share ✅

As you prepare to open up visibility to family members and loved ones, we’ve put together a checklist to help you ensure that your Welbi data is ready for sharing:

1. Ensure all residents have a level of care or home area specified in Welbi.
   1. Since family members will only be able to view programs specific to their loved one’s level of care or home area, it is important that every resident has a level of care or home area specified in Welbi.
   2. To check on this, navigate to the Residents section of Welbi, add the Level of Care/Home Area column to your resident list view, and sort the resident list by this column  so that residents without a Level of Care/Home Area appear at the top of the list. You can assign these residents to a Level of Care/Home Area in their Profile. 
   3. If your Levels of Care/Home Areas follow a consistent room number pattern, we can set you up with a mapping so that Level of Care/Home Area is automatically set based on room number. Contact support@welbi.co for more information.
2. Review the programs on your planning calendar to ensure that:
   1. Program titles are accurate and do not include any resident names or other confidential information (for example, you wouldn't want a scheduled program called “1-1 with Joanne” to appear in the Family Portal, in the interest of resident privacy);
   2. Any internal events or reminders that you do not wish to share with Family Portal users (e.g., internal meetings, staff schedules, etc) are set to Announcements. Another way to hide these from the Programs section of Family Portal would be to ensure no Level of Care/Home Area is listed;
   3. Your team has a process in place for cancelling programs in a timely manner, to prevent any confusion among family members viewing the Programs section of the Family Portal
3. Strive to document program attendance in a timely manner.
   1. The Family Portal will give families visiblity into both your scheduled programs and their loved one's attendance at those programs. Offer peace of mind and limit inquiries from family members by striving to enter program attendance shortly after a program's conclusion, or by end of day. 
   2. If there are programs that you do not take attendance for as a matter of process, consider switching them to Announcements.
4. Populate your Community Directory by following these steps.

Establishing a Launch Plan 🚀

To ensure a smooth and successful launch of your Family Portal, it's important to establish an internal launch plan for spreading the word and granting access to interested family members. In your planning discussions, consider the following:

• Promoting the Family Portal to your community - How will you get the word out to families? This could include approaches such as displaying posters around the building, including an announcement in an upcoming newsletter, posting on your social media channels, sending out an email blast, and adding a related agenda item to upcoming family and resident council meetings.
• Identifying interested families - How would you like family members to let you know that they're interested in accessing the Family Portal? This could include approaches such as a sign up sheet at reception, having families send an email request to the Life Enrichment department, setting up an online sign up form through something like Google Forms, etc.
• Granting access to family members who are interested - Once you've identified a family that would like to participate, which staff member(s) will be responsible for granting access to their designated Family Portal Admin? Note that the individual(s) responsible will need to have either the ‘Welbi Admin’ or ‘Team Member - Enhanced’ user role in order to do so.

Establishing Ongoing Support Processes 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

While Family Portal users will have access to this Help page within the app that provides detailed information and step-by-step instructions for various 'how-to' type questions, your team may still get occasional questions or requests for support from family members.

To empower your team to provide this ongoing support, we recommend that:

• Staff members bookmark this Help page so that it can be accessed easily in the event that they need to assist a family member.  Some teams may choose to identify dedicated staff member(s) who are responsible for answering these kinds of questions.
• Staff members download this information sheet containing answers to frequently asked questions about the Family Portal as a reference to field questions, or to provide as a hand-out to family members as needed 
  
  

We also recommend identifying a team member(s) who will be responsible for keeping the Community Directory up to date as staff come and go.