A: The Project suspended the rule requiring a Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment prior to a Case Plan completion, enabling users to either pre‑populate needs from an approved CANS or manually enter needs when a CANS is not yet completed.
 

A: At Go‑Live, counties will have the option to choose structured or unstructured contact notes. Supervisors will also have the option to require approval before submission. Unstructured notes currently support applying one contact to multiple children.
 

A: To address current Hotline and screening challenges, search functionality was enhanced and the system will allow screeners to approve screenings for referral movement without supervisor approval, except for Structured Decision Making (SDM), which must still be approved by a supervisor. A one‑page guide outlining mandatory fields was provided to CWDA and County Leadership for review and feedback. A final version of the Hotline Quick Start Guide & Intake demonstration was released on September 14, 2026.
 

A: Display safety alerts throughout all aspects of the screenings, referrals, and cases in CWS-CARES and are viewable in Production Simulation as of September 14, 2026.
 

A: The unmerge workflow is currently under development. This work was previously dependent on onboarding the new Service Desk vendor; however, due to contracting timelines, the Project has moved forward with development of the technical components of the unmerge workflow.

Technical testing will be completed, and the timing will be confirmed. Once the new Service Desk vendor begins onboarding in early October, the Project will work with the vendor to validate the end-to-end unmerge ticketing process, including routing, assignment, notifications, and the ability to support the targeted 48-hour SLA.

The Project deployed additional enhancements and refinements to the Civica Search tool in the Production Simulation environment at the end of August 2026, including enhancements to the “AND/OR” search criteria. The Project continues to refine search functionality based on testing results and county feedback.
 

A: In general, processing referrals in CWS‑CARES is expected to take roughly the same amount of time as in CWS/CMS. Staff considered 'expert' in CWS/CMS ran multiple referral scenarios to establish a time estimate: staff considered 'novice' in CWS/CMS completed the minimum requirements in about 30 minutes, and expert staff completed them in less time. The Project team is currently working to schedule walk-through sessions with Fresno and Los Angeles Counties to demonstrate the Hotline functionality, highlight recent enhancements to the Search tool, and gather additional feedback.

Counties later identified that search functionality contributed to concerns about overall processing time. In response, the Project has implemented improvements to search functionality. For more information on improved search functionality, see here.
 

A: The following Search enhancements were deployed to Production Simulation (Prod Sim, or CARES100) on August 29, 2026:

• The Person and RM (Resource Management) Directory Search now use the “And” operator instead of “Or,” resulting in more precise and narrowed search results.
• In Person Search, the “Sex at Birth” and “Approximate Age” criteria are now fully functional. Phonetic search for first and last names has also been enabled to make it easier to locate the intended individual. Previously reported performance issues, where searches took up to 2 minutes to return results, have been resolved.
• In RM Directory Search, multi-select capability for placement category types is now available.

A: The Project shared the Hotline Quick Start Guide & Intake demonstration, which was released to counties on September 14, 2026.

The one-pager identifies the mandatory fields required during the Hotline screening process and is intended to help streamline information gathering and documentation during a Hotline call. It also includes a recorded demonstration showing completion of the Hotline call and associated documentation, which took an average of approximately 23 minutes.
 

A: There are instances where a field is newly considered mandatory in CWS-CARES which was not required or entered in CWS/CMS. If a user opens a converted record for editing, they will be prompted to provide values for any unpopulated mandatory field before their changes can be saved.

A: E-signatures will be allowed on specific adoption forms, not necessarily all forms. The list of E-signable Adoption Forms below contains a current and verified list of Adoption forms where E-signature is allowed:

• PPADOP
• AD0856
• AD0513
• AD0580
• AD0090
• AD0551A
• AD0067
• AD0067A
• AD0907
• AD0907A
• AD0558
• AD0230
• AD0824
• AD0200
• AD0225
• AD4320
• JV0477
• JV0475