Frequently Asked Questions
Data
Q: Will there be an indication in CWS- CARES of tribally approved homes for RFA/Placement? If so, where will these fields appear in CWS-CARES? For context: The Office of Tribal Affairs (OTA) has indicated that there is currently no way to know if a placement is a tribally approved home for the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) placement in CWS/CMS. They would like to know how this information (or if) it will be reflected in CWS-CARES.
A: Yes, tribally approved homes will be a placement type in CWS-CARES. There won’t be a dedicated field in CWS-CARES, but there will be an indicator on the Resource Family Home (RFH) profile to identify a tribally approved home.
Q: Will the Binti export include “Unstructured Data” including documents? (For example: Forms, PDFs, Documents, Word etc.)
A: Unstructured data from External Systems is analyzed and converted similarly to structured data. If these documents/unstructured data are determined to be within the scope and are acceptable document types (such as RFA PDF/Word documents associated with an in-scope functionality in CARES), they can be processed and converted using the pre-defined external system conversion process. This is contingent upon counties providing the necessary mandatory metadata (e.g., IDs to link the document to the associated entity in CARES) for the conversion. Additional steps, such as moving documents to a predefined location, may be required, but the process is analogous to structured data conversion.
Forms/documents like Word, PDF, and Excel files are generally considered unstructured data. The term "applications" likely refers to forms or documents in progress but could also include partially structured data.
Q: Will we be able to add documents to closed cases/referrals in CARES? (Example: Program has a long-term project to scan old case documents and import into CWS/CMS. Likely the project will not be complete until after CARES goes live).
A: Yes, the user can upload documents to closed cases.
Q: Will counties be able to directly access CWS-CARES data to run daily extracts?
A: Counties will have a couple of ways to pull data from CWS-CARES. They will be able to create queries and reports using the CWS-CARES reporting tool, Tableau. A county can also ask the CWS-CARES Project Team to be part of the “Data Extracts” workgroup. However, counties should note that the current project efforts in this area are focused on the counties that currently get extracts from CWS/CMS. Therefore, we may not be able to include a county that’s not already a part of this group in time for V1.
Q: Will CANS that is processed by counties outside of the CWS-CARES be required to be loaded into CWS-CARES?
A: Short answer: There is a requirement for CANS to be entered into CARES-Live. Only CANS entered CARES-Live will be converted to CWS-CARES. CANS entered in other systems will not be converted to CWS-CARES. With the policy requirement that county CANS data be entered into CARES-Live since July 1, 2021, the CWS-CARES project has not planned for additional bulk upload of CANS data from other external systems into CWS-CARES. See below for more detailed information.
A: Detailed Answer: ACL-21-27 requires that effective on or before July 1, 2021, county Child Welfare Departments statewide enter all new CANS data into CARES-Live for all children with an open child welfare case regardless of which agency completed the CANS. When CWS-CARES Version 1 (V1) goes live in October 2026 all data in CARES-Live will we be transferred into CWS-CARES and CARES-Live will be decommissioned. With the policy requirement that county CANS data be entered into CARES-Live since July 1, 2021, the CWS-CARES project has not planned for additional bulk upload of CANS data from other external systems into CWS-CARES. In preparation for data conversion into CWS-CARES we strongly recommend counties not currently in compliance with state policy to use CARES-Live create a plan to transition their business process to start entering CANS data into CARES-Live as soon as possible. The plan should also include an approach for entering all CANS data created since the policy went into effect into CARES-Live prior to October 2026 so that data will be available in CWS-CARES. Further, if external systems exist that have duplicate functions to CARES-Live they conflict with the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) federal regulations and state policy (ACL 18-47) that counties should not develop or maintain external systems that duplicate functionality contained in the state’s CCWIS application. Counties are required to decommission any ancillary system functionality that duplicates the statewide child welfare case management system.
Q: Does the Project have a recommendation on a tool for paperless scanning and bulk upload, Application Programming Interfaces, API connection or other?
A: The CWS-CARES project team does not currently have a recommendation. The project will be researching this functionality for consideration in CWS-CARES future scope after CWS-CARES V1 is implemented. The design and timing of this enhancement is currently unknown.
Q: What is the timeline inclusion of bulk upload from CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES?
A: CWS-CARES continues to ingest new documents from CWS-CMS on a weekly basis. Counties can continue to upload documents into CWS/CMS until the day of CWS-CARES go-live and expect those files to be transferred into the CWS-CARES environment.
Q: What are External System needs for preparing scanned files for upload to CWS-CARES?
A: CWS/CMS limits the file size for uploaded documents to 5 MB per document. CWS-CARES will allow documents uploads of up to 100 MB. File types must be compatible with CWS-CARES, allowable file types include PDF, DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX, Jpeg/jpg, txt, mov/mkv/mp4 files. Users will be able to upload files into CWS-CARES using either individual or multifile selection into a case record.
Q: When will the data dictionary be available for counties to leverage when completing their scope assessment?
A: The draft of the data dictionary will be published by the end of 2024. CWS-CARES will remain in active development through March 2026. As a result, the data dictionary will continue to evolve till then. We plan on publishing updates to the CWS-CARES data dictionary every quarter after the initial draft is published by end of 2024.
Q: Will counties have access to all Regional Center data from the interface?
A: Upon the release of CWS-CARES V1, there will be a data exchange with the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) that will add Regional Center data into the system. This Regional Center Listing will include names, address(s), and phone numbers. This information will be gathered from the DDS website and will be updated any time a new location or changes are made to the webpage. At the release of CWS-CARES V1, a more robust interface and data exchange with DDS is not feasible and the project will be looking towards building something more comprehensive in later iterations of CWS-CARES.