Case Study: What to do when someone dies

About the author...

Paul and his wife Fiona used to lead the Vineyard church in Bournemouth, UK, where they introduced ChurchSuite and My ChurchSuite to the church. Paul now heads up customer support and training at ChurchSuite.

In this article, Paul explores how churches might use some of ChurchSuite's features when someone dies.

Overview

Any death is a painful experience for a church, both for the leaders and congregation and for the surviving family members, especially if they are also members of the church. While churches will consider pastoral care for the deceased's family and conducting the funeral service, what should happen to the deceased's personal data and when? Do you archive, delete or do something else?

Before making changes to a deceased person's personal information in ChurchSuite, I encourage you to carefully consider the impact on surviving family members who may be currently linked to the information. For example, grieving parents/carers following the loss of a child or a grieving spouse following the loss of their partner will each have preferences about what to do with their deceased family member's information and when to do it.

Imagine a parent, carer, or spouse who used to see their linked child or partner's details in My ChurchSuite, but now suddenly cannot see that person because you have immediately archived or deleted them. Yes, they've died, but what if it's too soon to make that change? Or what if you don't make certain changes, and an unsuspecting user sends an inadvertent communication to the deceased's email address or a surviving family member?

Any change to a deceased person's data must be handled sensitively, appropriately, promptly, and, most importantly, in accordance with the wishes (or reasonably expected wishes) of the surviving family members.

Interestingly, both the EU GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act, like other international data protection laws, primarily relate to the processing of personal information for the living, with very little guidance on the personal information of the deceased. Certainly, both highlight the importance of Data Controllers only processing personal information that is being kept up to date and necessary for an organisation's purposes, but most data protection guidance is silent on matters of pastoral care!

With this in mind, I would strongly encourage churches to engage with the deceased's family on this subject as part of their early pastoral care. They probably haven't yet thought about this subject, so this is an opportunity to demonstrate sensitivity to their feelings and show that you are indeed thinking about them during a difficult time. Find an appropriate time to explain the options available to them and why making some changes, perhaps sooner rather than later, will benefit them, the wider church family, and your staff team. I've learned in ministry that it's entirely appropriate to alert a grieving family about the "insensitivity pitfalls" the church wishes to avoid by removing the deceased person's details from usual circulation at the earliest appropriate opportunity. We then agree together on what will happen and when, and I explain the consequences of the changes we're proposing to ensure there are no surprises.

In the remainder of this case study, I outline the processes that my team and I followed at the church I used to lead. I offer them as suggestions for your consideration—feel free to adapt them as you see fit for your context. If you have further suggestions and ideas from your own pastoral experiences, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me, and I'll incorporate them into this case study to help other ChurchSuite churches in the future.

First steps - prevent communication and restrict visibility

As soon as we became aware of the death, a priority was to disable all communication options for the deceased - to opt them out of receiving any further communications - ensuring the surviving family members who will likely access the deceased's email account won't encounter emails from the church, like an unfortunate rota reminder.

We also set all the deceased's privacy settings to "not visible". We disabled their My ChurchSuite access to prevent any further access to the deceased person's My ChurchSuite profile through any device and we ensured their name, email, mobile, telephone and address were all set to "not visible" - meaning the deceased's name and any contact details were no longer visible to others in the church within My ChurchSuite.

You should also check if the deceased contact has an active giver profile in the Giving module and consider the giver communication options, as well as any active pledges that require action.

In the case of a child who has died, consideration will need to be given to the child's inclusion in age-based group member lists. Removing the child from groups will prevent their name from appearing on printed registers. However, until the child is archived, they will continue to appear in search results in the Check-In system.

Review and scale back your data

It may be helpful to begin scaling back the deceased person's personal information that you hold in ChurchSuite, and indeed in any other electronic or manual systems, retaining only what is necessary for a season, and only where you have a clear need for it (e.g., a lawful basis for processing).

In our context, we removed the person's email, telephone, and mobile number—a surefire way to ensure others do not inadvertently use those details in the church. We would, however, leave their address in place, ensuring it still shows " At this address" in linked family member profiles. Later in the process, we archived the deceased person's profile. Archived people are still listed as "At this address" in ChurchSuite, but their name is displayed in a strikethrough font, which can often be helpful.

We removed any notes and key dates that no longer served a useful purpose for the church's ongoing operations.

Relationship status and linked family members

In the early days of pastoral care for a bereaved family, we refrained from making any changes to relationship statuses in our database, not until we had first discussed this with the family, especially where there are linked surviving family members still in the church and in your database, too.

So, in the context of a married couple, we refrained from changing the surviving partner's marital status to "Widowed" or unlinking the deceased partner from the surviving family member's profile. You'll want to do this fairly soon, but we found it helpful to pause a little and take time to discuss this with the family members first. Following the loss of a partner, it will take time to come to terms with the fact that they are widowed - they will still feel very much married or in partnership with their lost loved one, so be sensitive.

If the deceased is a parent or carer, we carefully review the family's linked children to ensure that they are linked to a surviving parent or carer and unlinked from the deceased parent or carer. We also reviewed the linked children's profiles to ensure that no unexpected or unnecessary contact details for the deceased were hidden and that communications sent through the Children module, marked as "Send to parent or carer," were not delivered to the deceased's email address or mobile.

Add a note

When we became aware of a death, my team found adding a sensitively worded note to people's profiles especially helpful. We added a note to the deceased's profile and all known surviving family members, including children, that we held in ChurchSuite. Any user viewing a person's profile in the Address Book or Children module would then see that note.

Rotas and groups

While archiving a deceased person will ultimately remove them from all groups, ministries and rotas, we found it helpful to address this separately. As explained previously, we didn't always archive a deceased person right away, often waiting until we had spoken with the family; however, we did want to ensure that rota overseers and group leaders were in the loop following the death of a rota or group member, to ensure, for example, that rota reminders were not sent.

A person's profile page lists all the groups, ministries, and rotas that a person is serving on. We would methodically work through each group and ministry to remove the deceased person from the small group and ministry member lists, and also remove them from any active and future rotas. We then informed the group leaders and ministry overseers. If the deceased is a ministry overseer themselves, you will want to remove them from the ministry's settings so that rota communications and swap notifications are not sent inadvertently.

Marking the date of death and anniversaries

We found it helpful to add a "Deceased" key date to the deceased's profile, indicating the date of death. Later in our processes, when archiving the deceased's profile, key dates are helpfully retained. This key date was used for reporting purposes to identify the number of deaths each year - of course, we also reported births, weddings, and baptisms.

We also added a sensitively named "Bereavement" key date for the surviving family members. In the description field of the key date, you can add the deceased's name and relationship so that it's clear to whom the bereavement is related when viewing a profile page.

This "Bereavement" key date was incredibly useful in helping us identify and mark anniversaries of death. Depending on your pastoral care follow-up processes, you may consider creating a 'Bereavement follow-up' flow, adding surviving family members to the flow and setting a due date for the next anniversary of the bereavement, or perhaps setting the due date for the deceased's birthday or another significant date, so that you can respond appropriately at that time. A timely phone call, card or message on certain important dates will be a comfort to those learning to live with loss following a death. ChurchSuite helped us stay organised in this respect so that nothing got overlooked or forgotten - those pastoral care flow reminders were invaluable!

Other considerations

Here are a few other things you may wish to check in your database in case they have an undesired impact on your pastoral care for a bereaved family:

• Future event sign-ups—Check the deceased's profile page for any sign-ups to future events that may have been made before their death. You can then remove or refund their sign-up for those events.
• Scheduled Emails/SMS—Check the deceased's communication log on their profile page to see if there are any unsent scheduled emails or SMS messages. You may wish to cancel them to prevent them from being sent. Remember, even if you have removed their email address or opted them out of all communication, a pre-scheduled communication will have already been submitted to the email/SMS queue, ready for release on the scheduled date and time.
• Giving module—Although no immediate action will likely be needed here, you should check to see if any recurring online donation subscriptions need to be cancelled. You may also wish to add a note against the deceased's giver profile so that your finance team are aware. If you later archive the deceased's profile in the Address Book, any linked giver profile will remain intact and unlinked. Note that the unlinked giver profile will remain active until you archive it. You'll want to keep the giver profile active while you complete any outstanding Gift Aid claims or financial reporting. Make a note to have the deceased's giver profile archived at the earliest opportunity. Don't delete the giver's profile, as you'll lose your record of the historic donations that person made! If you have claimed Gift Aid on the deceased giver's historic donations, you will be unable to delete their giver profile - only archiving will be an option.
• User Profile—If the deceased had user access to your ChurchSuite modules, we recommend that you archive their user account to prevent unauthorised login attempts. Avoid deleting the user account right away - it's better to archive the account initially so that you can reactivate it if needed. Remember, the deceased user may have content in your ChurchSuite account that was restricted to their account only.
• Event overseers—Use the Calendar module's custom reporting functionality to view a list of events and check if the deceased is assigned as an event overseer for any future events, so that you can unassign them.

Changing the relationship status

In conjunction with your pastoral conversations with a surviving spouse or partner, there will be an appropriate time to change their marital status in ChurchSuite. The options are either "Widowed" or "Single." Update the surviving partner's profile, possibly adding a note to support the change. The deceased's marital status will then change, and the couple will be unlinked in the database. The surviving spouse or partner will see their marital status on the My ChurchSuite > My Details page.

Note that if an address is maintained for both partners, the "At this Address" section will continue to display the unlinked couple and any linked children. If this is not desirable for any reason, then you can remove the deceased's address, and the surviving spouse/partner's profile will not show their deceased partner on the list.

The death of a child is also especially difficult. My ChurchSuite includes a My Children section for parents/carers with linked children. Review your My ChurchSuite settings - it may be helpful to have the My Children section only show for parents/carers who have existing (surviving) linked children. Seeing one's deceased child in the My Children section may be a comforting or traumatic experience. Act promptly in conjunction with the family's wishes to make any necessary changes. Once a deceased child has been unlinked or archived, they will cease to appear in the My Children section for their parents/carers.

Archive or delete?

My preference is always to archive in the first instance rather than delete. Archived contacts can be set active again if needed. Although this is unlikely in this context, it is helpful if a user has made a mistake, whereas deletion is permanent and irreversible.

While Recital 27 of the EU GDPR confirms that the regulation does not apply to the deceased, there may be other laws in your country or region that govern the storage and processing of personal information about the deceased. As longs as all personally-identifiable data has been removed from the profile, your privacy policy may permit you to retain that archived profile for reporting purposes under a legitimate interest basis. I would also be in touch with the surviving family members to ensure they are comfortable with what you would like to do. I would not go against family members' wishes to delete, even if I did have a legitimate interest in retaining some data.

Eventually, however, there is an appropriate time to delete a deceased person's profile. In our church, we had an annual data cleansing workflow that included reviewing our active and archived data to determine what needed to be retained and what could be removed. I'm mindful that from experience, churches are often reluctant to let go of historical data, for no other reason than "just in case"!

And finally...

While indirectly related to this case study, ChurchSuite has further super-helpful functionality for adding and processing funeral bookings in the Bookings module. See the related articles for details.

How are you managing the personal data of the deceased in ChurchSuite?

The above suggestions use various aspects of ChurchSuite's functionality. How do you manage the personal information of someone who has died? We'd love to update this case study with your suggestions, too - let us know by emailing support@churchsuite.com