People

Family Relationships¶

Knowing relationships between families within your church can be very helpful; and most churches will have quite a few families that are related to each other. In TouchPoint, you can map these family-to-family relationships.

When there is a death of someone in your church, it is so helpful to know of anyone related to that person. Also, if there is an emergency… say, an elderly person falls coming out of the service… you will need to know if there is a family member in your database that you can contact. There are many others reasons that this information is helpful.

It is useful when a child is in the database without their parents. You can use the Related Family feature to connect that child to a grand-parent, aunt, a foster parent, or even a friend that is responsible for bringing that child to church.

Note

Be sure to add a family relationship when you move a newly married young people out of their parents’ family into a new family.

Add Family Relationship¶

Step 1

Go to the the people record for anyone in either family.

Step 2

Click the green + Add Related Family button.

Step 3

Using the Search/Add dialog, find any individual in the family you want to relate.

Note

It does not matter which family member you select, as the relationship is family to family.

Select the person, and then click Commit and Add.

Step 4

Enter the description of the relationship between the two families. See notes below regarding descriptions.

Click the blue Save Changes button.

Remove a Family Relationship¶

Step 1: Click the pencil icon beside the related family
Step 2: Click the red Delete button

Important

The same description will appear in the Related Families section for each of the two related families.
Because this is linking (relating) families, not individuals, you must be specific in the description.
The description should describe the closest relationship…such as a parent/child relationship. There is no need to add further relationships for the same family in order to also indicate the relationship of siblings within either of those families.
When relating families where there are unusual circumstances (like custody issues), be explicit when explaining that.

Examples¶

These are clear descriptions:

Johnny is the son of John and Mary Doe.

Frank Wright is the grandfather of Janice Williams.

Stan Howard is the son of Ron and Debbie Howard and is living with his maternal grandparents, M/M Harry Davis.

These are ambiguous descriptions (avoid this type):

Mary’s the mother.

Janice is his granddaughter.

Stan’s mother is Debbie.