Purpose: The Sacred Heart Parish Community demonstrates our care and concern for parish families by providing meals to families in need of short-term meal assistance. Anticipated opportunities include: childbirth, death in the family, serious injury or hospitalization, etc. (Note: list in not all inclusive – I’m sure there are other reasons for support, we may need to develop the criteria more fully.)

Concept: This program,

1. consolidates separate groups currently performing the same ministry
2. provides one procedure for the parish for requesting meals for those in need
3. provides for one procedure to manage volunteer contacts willing to prepare meals
4. includes assistants to contact by phone those who don’t have internet access but may want to prepare meals

Procedures:

1. When a parishioner becomes aware of a parish family that needs assistance they contact the Meals Ministry Recipient Contact or parish staff directly.

   1. If the parish staff takes the request, they will immediately contact the Recipient Contact to pass on the information.

   2. Parish staff will NOT commit to fulfilling the requirement – their role is simply to collect and pass on information to the Meals Ministry Recipient Contact.

2. The Meals Ministry Contact phone number and email will become a permanent entry in the weekly bulletin.

3. The Recipient Contact talks to the recipient family directly to determine the scope of the requested support.

4. The Recipient Contact forwards the information to the Meal Train Coordinator who posts the pertinent information to the Meal Train website and notifies the Volunteer Coordinator to contact (email or telephonic as appropriate) Meals Ministry volunteers to provide meals.

5. Once the Meal Train is initiated, the Recipient Contact checks with the recipients weekly to determine whether our assistance is satisfactory and/or if changes are necessary.