Relationships in FBM

Relationships are important only if you need to record data specific to an individual member of the family. For many pantries a single record that lists each member of the household and their ages is sufficient to record the data needed for grants and other programs. This method of recording household visits is easiest since only one record needs to be created for the entire household to record household visits. If this is the case for your pantry then you do not need to use Relationships.

Mixed pantries for the most part use the single household record to manage their distributions but on occasion need to work with a specific member of the family that is not the Head of household or Primary record. The pantry needs to record specific information for an individual member of the family, so that family member needs to have their own record. The relationship feature in FBM allows you to work with a combination of family records types. Managing household visits and tracking the appropriate numbers for single record households while allowing for record keeping or case management for an individual in the family.

Multiple nuclear household situations like in managing children for divorced parents. For example there is two households from divorced parents and the two children spend time in each household. With relationships you can create a family relationship for one parent and another relationship with the other parent. This allows you to see that these two children live in both households and makes it easy for the volunteer to see this and handle the situation as required by your organization.

Relationships in FBM allows for any relationship connection or variation you need and it is all done with a simple custom field for the guest account called "Relationship".

How to use relationships in FBM and examples of some common uses.

To start using relationships simply go to "Settings" scroll down to "Custom Fields" then select "Guest". To the right in a blue box select the create new custom field. Label the new field Family Unit and set the field type to "relationship". You likely will leave the rest of the fields in their default state and save the custom field. Now that this field is active go to "Manage" "Guest" and select a test client account. If you don't have a test account make one for the head of household and one for the spouse. Using manage guest find the spouse record you just created and edit her account. Choose "Edit Guest" to do this. Scroll to the bottom of the spouse's record and find the Family Unit field you just added. Notice you see there are no relationships currently and you see a "search" and "remove" button, choose the search button. A search screen will pop up and search for the head of household record and click on them. Once you selected the relationship you will now see the head of household name as a relationship for this spouse record. Save the change and now you have tied two separate records into one relationship, more specifically a family unit.

To take this to the next step add another record for a child in this household. Once you created the record use the relationship field for this child record and link them to the head of household as a relationship. Once this is complete you now have three records tied together as a Family Unit. To add additional family records just follow the same steps for each member of the family.

*** Remember always link a record to the Head of Household. Not the other way around! ***

The head of household normally does not have a relationship link because others link to them.

The Prize

To finish the setup for using the relationship feature go to settings and scroll down and choose the "Create Visit Config" link. To the right click on the drop down and choose the relationship field you created before. It was called Family Unit. Once selected add it. At this point you can reorder where this field displays in the create visit page, when done go to create new visit. Select an older or current outreach, search for the head of household record and click on the create visit tab if you already didn't go there automatically. Notice the Family Unit field? See how it shows this record has two child links. In this case that is the spouse and an actual child. You can click on either of those and you will change records and be on the selected record and ready to process them. In fact you can toggle between all three of them and handle all of their visits really quickly and only have to search for one of them not all three to give a visit to. Especially when providing services specific to an individual versus a house hold service. Individual services are like a jacket give away, flu shot program, back to school outreaches, soup kitchens and more.

It is important to not be confused by the labels of Primary and Child, they simply mean this. Primary identifies the account you link to. In most cases that is a head of household. Children mean other accounts that link to the same primary as you do. Children does not mean they are minors just additional accounts. So mom the spouse, the grandparent living with you, an exchange student and even your own children will be identified as children records.

You may be thinking that you don't want to break out every family member this way and the good news is you don't need to! Simply break out the ones you need to and link them to the head of household so you can keep them close at hand and easy to recognize whose family they belong. A good example of this is a family of 6 but a 13 year old is receiving counseling. So to record this specific information to the 13 year olds record you create that child an account of their own and link them to the head of household using the relationship field. This allows for personalized case management when needed and standard fare for recording distributions the rest of the time.

One more common use is when children are spending time with both of their parent's households due to a divorce. You can create a second relationship field and name it Secondary Household and link the kids to one parent through the Household Unit relationship field and then again to the other parent through the Secondary Household relationship field.

There is no limit to the number of relationships you can create to fit your needs exactly.