March 27, 2025
Communications
We are pleased to announce that the new CWDS Meeting & Event Calendar will go live on Friday, March 28, 2025. This will be a near real-time calendar that includes the meeting/event name, date and time. The new calendar will not require users to log in.
New CWDS Public Calendar: Streamlined Access to All Meetings and Events
CWS-CARES, CARES RFA, CARES-Live and CWS/CMS recurring meetings and ad-hoc meetings are streamlined into one view. This includes Core Constituent meetings, Implementation meetings, workgroups, and committees that engage external participants such as counties, Probation, Tribes with Title IV-E agreements with CDSS, and State and Federal partners.
Starting Friday, March 28, 2025, the CWDS public website will feature a new page where anyone can access the calendar of CWDS events at any time. The current Events Calendar at will be removed and a message will be displayed redirecting to the new calendar.
Additionally, the existing CWS-CARES Meeting Calendar will display a message and link to the new calendar.
NOTE: If you have bookmarked or saved the current Events Calendar URL, please refresh it with the new CWDS Meeting & Event Calendar URL. Feel free to share this communication with others in your organization. If you have suggestions to improve this calendar, please send them to the Customer Relations Team.
Action Required
Once this new calendar goes live, please update your saved bookmarks by replacing them with the new URL for the CWDS Meeting & Event Calendar in your web browsers.
March 25, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Implementation Coordinators, and OCM Coordinators:
We are pleased to announce that the existing CWS-CARES Stakeholder Resources page has been updated to reflect publicly available resources regarding CWS-CARES.
The intent of these changes to the CWDS website is to build awareness on CWS-CARES project updates and promote user engagement. These changes will be implemented on April 8, 2025.
- The CWS-CARES Users page is currently located under the ‘Stakeholder Resources’ dropdown (note: URL for this page has not changed):
- The updated page will be organized by the type of role played by the site visitor and will include descriptions to help users more quickly navigate to what they need:
- Previously, this page was sorted by the type of system discussed. The page will now solely reflect CWS-CARES resources. All other resources will be moved to one of the following locations:
- “Follow our Progress” (part of the horizontal navigation bar at the top of the page)
- “RFA and CARES-Live Users” (part of the “Stakeholder Resources” drop down menu)
- “Technical Support” (part of the “Stakeholder Resources” drop down menu)
- In addition to these changes, the resources found on the former page titled “Project Reporting” will be moved to the following locations:
- Legislative Updates – Monthly: now visible under “Follow Our Progress”
- CWDS Planning Roadmap & Timeline: now visible under “Follow Our Progress”
- CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings: now on CARES User Resources | Child Welfare Digital Services
- And finally, any links that were previously found on this page will still be found at the bottom of the resources page. These links will also be available on either the Technical Support page or the CARES-Live and RFA Users pages once live, but they will be removed by May 31, 2025.
Action Required
Please reach out to Customer Relations if you have any questions.
March 21, 2025
Communications
Core Constituent Points of Contact:
Core Constituents,
You shared in quarterly Core Constituent surveys that new meeting and demonstration participants would benefit from onboarding resources to better understand CWS-CARES and how to engage effectively. In response, we are introducing the Core Constituent Orientation Guide, a one-page resource designed to support your onboarding and participation.
What’s in the Guide?
- Essential resources to get started
- Key activities for Core Constituents
- How to provide feedback
- Contact information for questions
You can access the guide in the attached document. It will also be included in all Core Constituent meeting invites moving forward.
We would like to hear from you! If you have suggestions to improve the guide, please send them to the Customer Relations Team.
Thank you for your continued participation and valuable contributions to CWS-CARES.
Action Requested
Send your suggestions to improve the Core Constituent Orientation Guide to the Customer Relations team.
March 20, 2025
Communications
Child Welfare Directors, Child Welfare Director-Alternates, Tribal Leadership, Probation Leadership, Core Constituents, CARES SPOCs, and Implementation Coordinators:
Child Welfare Leadership and CWS-CARES Meeting Participants,
As part of our ongoing effort to provide you greater insight into upcoming meetings for the CWS-CARES project, please see the updated CWS-CARES Meeting Calendar for March – May 2025. This calendar includes all meetings hosted by the CWS-CARES project, including Core Constituent demonstrations, implementation meetings, and key workgroups.
This calendar includes the following sessions:
- Prototype Demonstrations: Core Constituents review prototypes, or pre-build designs of CWS-CARES, to represent system functionality, to provide early feedback on user experience, navigation, and screen actions before the designs go into development.
- Build Review Demonstrations: Core Constituents see some of the feedback they provided in the Prototype Demonstrations reflected in CWS-CARES and provide further feedback on the developed product.
- Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) 2: Participants will test end-to-end real-world scenarios in CWS-CARES.
- NEW Process Information Sessions: Designed for OCM Coordinators, these sessions outline new processes in CWS-CARES and their impact on staff workflows, helping counties, probation departments, CDSS, and Tribes with Title IV-E Agreements update policies and procedures.
Action Required
Please share this information with those at your organization you feel should be informed. Note: This calendar is point-in-time and subject to change. The CWS-CARES project plans to deliver a sustainable, more real-time calendar solution that will be accessible to all meeting participants and leadership in late March 2025.
If you have any questions, please contact CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov.
March 05, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs:
The CWS-CARES Implementation Organizational Change Management (OCM) Team is proud to present the third of several videos in the CWS-CARES Video Series. The videos will be under five minutes, will showcase the CWS-CARES product, and will prepare you for the coming changes.
The next video, CWS-CARES 101, was developed with all end-users in mind. It expands on the benefits of CWS-CARES from the previous two videos in the series. The link to this video, as with the other OCM videos, is saved on the CWDS website, in the OCM section of the Implementation portal.
Video Link: CWS-CARES 101
Action Required
We request that SPOCs share the CWS-CARES 101 video with all staff impacted by CWS-CARES. We also encourage you to show the video to your teams in upcoming meetings or when someone contacts you to ask about CWS-CARES. We hope you can use this video as a tool to help jump-start conversations with your teams about the future.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the CWS-CARES Implementation OCM Team.
January 27, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts and CTW Registered Testers:
To accommodate the CARES Pilot Support activities, the CWDS Executive Leadership Team has decided to postpone the CWS/CMS Release 9.6 by three months, originally scheduled for Saturday, May 17, 2025. We apologize for any inconvenience this postponement may cause.
The new CWS/CMS Release 9.6 Go-Live date is still to be determined. An update will be sent out as soon as the new release date has been finalized.
Action Required
Please look for the CTW related meeting cancellations. No other actions regarding CWS/CMS Release 9.6 are needed at this time. Release activities are on hold until the release Go-Live date has been finalized.
January 15, 2025
Communications
We are pleased to present the third issue of the CARES Compass, the two-page executive summary with upcoming project communications and brief informational highlights:
- Stakeholder Briefing #2: This is a reminder of the next CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing session on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 – 9AM to 12PM. This session will provide you with valuable insights into CWS-CARES and an opportunity to ask questions.
- Coming Soon - CARES 101 Video: Get ready for the CWS-CARES video #3, coming in early spring 2025.
- Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) 2: Read about how many counties have volunteered to participate in this activity and important dates to keep in mind.
- RFA with CWS-CARES: In the future, Resource Family Approval (RFA) features will be integrated into CWS-CARES. We highlight the activities in progress.
- Upcoming Events and Communications: This is a list of CWS-CARES communications that will be released in the next three months.
The newest issue of the CARES Compass is available here: The CARES Compass January 2025 | Volume 2, Issue 1
We appreciate your continued commitment to staying informed.
Action Required
No action required.
If you have any questions, need clarification, or have any accessibility issues, please do not hesitate to contact Customer Relations.
January 13, 2025
Communications
To: Child Welfare and Probation CARES SPOCs and Child Welfare Implementation Coordinators
CC: County, Tribe, Probation, and State Leadership, and OCM Coordinators
We hope you found our first Stakeholder Briefing Session in June 2024 informative and useful. We’re excited to announce our Second CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing Session to unveil new features, foster engagement, and drive user adoption.
Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Format: Webinar
The agenda includes:
- Leadership Opening
- A Holistic Design & User Feedback Update
- Demonstrations and Feature Highlights:
- Intake & Investigations (what’s changed since the last session)
- Case Management
- The Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED) interface between CWS-CARES & CalSAWS
- An External Systems Update
- Implementation, OCM, & Training Updates
- Technology Updates
- Q&A
You may register for the session using the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2 Registration page.
Registration takes less than a minute by entering your name, email, and county or organization. Once registration is complete, a meeting notice with the session information will be automatically sent to the email provided.
You may register for others or forward this email to staff that might be interested in attending the session. We encourage everyone to register by January 22, 2025.
The session will be recorded. For more information, please refer to the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings page on the CWDS website which contains the session dates, past session recordings, and materials.
Action Required
You are invited to register for the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefing #2. We encourage registration by January 22, 2025.
For additional questions, please email CWDS Customer Relations.
