Households let you group related client profiles — a parent and child, a couple, someone and their carer — so the family context is visible wherever you work with any of them.
Households are opt-in and manual. Nothing is grouped automatically, and no one is put into a household because they share an address. A household only exists once someone in your organisation creates it and links clients to it.
You can work with households from two places, and both do the same thing:
Households in the Case Management sidebar — the overview of every household in your organisation.
The Household card on a client's Profile tab — the household that one client belongs to.
Manage households from the Households page
Open Households in the Case Management sidebar. Each household appears as a card showing:
the household name;
any household notes;
the assigned staff, or No staff assigned;
the number of people living there, or People in household not recorded;
a members badge with the number of linked client profiles;
each member's name, linked to their profile, with their relationship role in brackets;
a one-line door-knocking history, when there is any outreach activity.
If nothing has been set up yet, you will see No households yet. Use "Create household" to add one, then link clients to it.
Create a household
Select Create household at the top right.
Enter a Household name, for example Smith family.
Under Assigned staff, tick the staff members responsible for this household. You can tick more than one.
Optionally enter People in household — everyone living there, including people who are not clients.
Select Create household.
The dialog reminds you that households start empty — link clients to it afterwards from its card. Creating a household here does not add anyone to it.
Edit a household's details
On the household's card, select Edit household details.
Change the name, the assigned staff, or the people count.
Select Save changes.
A household name is required, and the people count must be a whole number of zero or more, so Save changes stays unavailable until both are valid.
Link clients to a household
On the household's card, select Link clients to this household.
Type at least two characters into Search clients by name.... Clients already in this household are left out of the results; if nothing matches you will see No matching clients.
Select the client you want.
Choose the Relationship role.
Select Link client.
The dialog stays open with the updated Current members list, so you can link several people one after another. Select Done when you have finished.
If the client already belongs to a different household, the link is refused with This client already belongs to another household. Remove them from that household first.
Delete a household
On the household's card, select Delete.
Confirm Delete this household? Members keep their own profiles; only the grouping is removed.
Deleting only removes the grouping and its household notes and door-knocking log. Every member keeps their own client profile, cases, and records.
Manage a household from a client's Profile tab
Open the client, go to the Profile tab, and find the Household card.
When the client is not in a household
The card shows Not part of a household. alongside a Create household button.
Select Create household.
Enter the Household name.
Choose This client's role — the client you started from is added automatically with this role.
Optionally enter People in household (optional) and Notes (optional).
Select Create.
Unlike the Households page, a household created here starts with this client already in it.
When the client is already in a household
The card shows the household name, the member count, any notes, the people count and assigned staff, and every member. The client whose profile you are on is marked (this client); the other members' names link to their profiles.
Rename — select Rename, edit the name, then select Save.
Add member — select Add member, search for the client, pick a role, then select Add.
Change a role — use the role dropdown next to any member. The change saves immediately.
Remove a member — select the Remove from household cross next to their name. Their profile is untouched.
Dissolve — select Dissolve and confirm Dissolve this household? Members keep their own profiles; only the grouping is removed.
Relationship roles and the rules to know
Every member has one relationship role:
Parent
Child
Partner
Sibling
Carer
Other
Other is the default if you do not choose one.
A few rules catch people out:
A client can belong to only one household. To move someone, remove them from their current household first, then link them to the new one.
Households created from the Households page start empty. Creating one from a client's Profile tab is the only way to seed it with a member.
Removing the last member leaves the household in place. It stays as an empty household until you delete or dissolve it deliberately.
The people count is a free-standing number. It records everyone living at the address, including people who are not clients, so it can legitimately differ from the number of linked profiles shown on the members badge.
Log door knocking and leaflet drops
Household outreach lives in the Notes & door knocking area. On the Households page, select Notes & door knocking on a household's card to expand it. On a client's Profile tab, it is already open at the bottom of the Household card.
Log an event
Three buttons log one event per tap:
Door knock – answered
Door knock – not answered
Leaflet drop
One tap is one logged event, recorded at the current time against your name.
Log something that happened earlier
Select Log for a past date/time.
Pick the date and time. You will see The next button tap will log at this time.
Tap one of the three buttons.
The date and time cannot be in the future. After the event is logged, the buttons go back to logging at the current time.
Correct or undo an event
Change a time — select the pencil next to an event, pick a new date and time, then select Save.
Undo the last event — select Undo last.
These have deliberate limits:
You can only change or undo events you logged. If someone else logged it, you will be told the event was logged by someone else and cannot be changed or undone here.
Undo last only removes the most recent event for that household.
An event's type cannot be changed. If you tapped the wrong button, undo it and log the right one.
No event can be dated in the future.
The three most recent events are listed with their time and who logged them. Select Show all … events to see the rest.
Household notes
Under Notes, select Add note, type the note, and select Save note. Notes are listed newest first with the author and date. When there are none, you will see No notes yet.
Read the outreach statistics
Each household's card shows a one-line summary of its own history, for example Knocked 5 times, answered on attempt 5 · 2 leaflet drops, or …not yet answered when nobody has come to the door.
At the top of the Households page, an organisation-wide summary appears once there has been some activity:
Door knocks — total door knocks logged, answered and unanswered together.
Households answered — how many knocked households have answered at least once, out of how many have been knocked at all.
Avg knocks to first answer — the average number of attempts it took to get an answer, counted only across households that have answered. Households that have never answered are not averaged in, so they cannot drag the figure up.
Leaflet drops — total leaflets logged.
Below the headline figures:
By week (knocks · answered · leaflets) shows recent weeks in order, so you can see effort building or tailing off.
By staff member shows each person's knocks, how many of those were answered, and their leaflet drops.
Two things to keep in mind when reading these:
Leaflet drops are never counted as knock attempts. They are reported separately and do not affect the average.
Attempts are numbered by when they happened, not when they were typed in. Back-dating an event slots it into the right place in the sequence, which can change which attempt counts as the first answer.
Household notes and outreach are not client records
Household notes and the door-knocking log are an internal case-management log. They are never written to any client record and are never synced to Joy. The note box says so directly: Internal note about this household (not saved to any client record)…
If information belongs on a client's record — a contact you had with them, an observation about their care, a consent, a safeguarding concern — record it on that client's own profile, case, or records instead. Anything left only in a household note will not appear anywhere on their record.
Troubleshooting
A colleague sees fewer members than I do
Members are filtered by who can see each client. If a client's record is restricted, only the staff assigned to them and organisation Owners see them in the household. Everyone else sees the same household with that person left out.
A household is not showing at all
If every member of a household is hidden from you, the whole household is hidden too — including its notes, its outreach log, and its contribution to the organisation-wide statistics. Ask a colleague who works with that family, or your organisation Owner.
A name shows as "Former staff"
Staff who have been removed from your organisation can no longer be looked up by name. Anywhere their name would appear — assigned staff, a note's author, who logged an outreach event — you will see Former staff instead. The record itself is unchanged.
The outreach summary is not on the Households page
The organisation-wide summary only appears once there is something to summarise. Log at least one door knock or leaflet drop and it will show.