A: Beginning with All County Letter (ACL) 18-47, CDSS has been encouraging counties to include early termination language in their contracts for external systems to enable them to decommission duplicative functionality when required. The state encourages counties to work with their contract and procurement offices to incorporate language into any vendor contracts for external systems that may allow them flexibility to modify and/or terminate contracts as appropriate as the statewide functionality is developed and fully implemented in the CWS-CARES. Decommissioning of Binti or moving it to a read-only status is required at the time of V1 Go-Live, scheduled for October 26, 2026. If the county has chosen to move the software to a read-only status, counties should consider how long their internal contract amendment processes take and determine when to initiate that process to accomplish a read-only status by October 26, 2026.

A: All CARES V1 functionality will be available in Production Simulation, including:

• Reporting
• Intake & Investigations
• Case Management
• Courts
• Resource Family Home (RFH)
• Resource & Provider Management
• Financial Management
• Eligibility

A: Dedicated County Users will be expected to access CWS-CARES using their dedicated county machines (supported by CWDS), similar to how they currently access CWS/CMS. Non-CWDS-supported county machines will not be allowed to access CWS-CARES. Users with specialized access needs (as seen in CWS/CMS) may be assigned SCBS-Citrix access based on specific business requirements.
 

A: Our Disaster Recovery Plan is called a Technical Recovery Plan (TRP). The Project team recognizes the criticality of a comprehensive TRP to ensure continuity and resilience across CWS-CARES. While a finalized plan is not yet available for distribution, significant work has been underway to align our recovery strategy with best practices and stakeholder needs. We anticipate further development and refinement of the TRP over the coming months, with a potential target for completion around mid-2026. We appreciate the interest and will continue to provide updates as the plan evolves and is ready to share with the counties.

A: The scope of CWS-CARES Version 2 is confidential and cannot be disclosed at this time. Details will be shared once the request for offer (RFO) is released to the public. A request for offer is a document used by procurement teams to gather and compare information from vendors.  

A: The CWS-CARES project has a Core Constituent Participation (CCP) model to ensure collaboration with counties and Tribes. The CWS-CARES Version 2 CCP model employs the same methodology as the current CWS-CARES Version 1 model, as detailed Special Project Report (SPR) 6 and ACL 23-62 (July 18, 2023). The Version 2 CCP model maintains the same high-level activity categories as Version 1 CCP model, including milestone design and development, implementation, external systems development and research, and interfaces. Annual funding allocations are determined based on planned activities and budget availability. 

A: Here are the following timeframes for the various levels of deficiency as documented in CWS-CARES & CARES RFA Service Level Agreements:

• For Level 1 Deficiency, the Contractor shall fix issue and close the service request ticket within four (4) hours after Contractor receives the service request ticket in the Contractor’s queue within the State’s service request tool.
• For Level 2 Deficiency, the Contractor shall fix the issue and close the service request ticket within three (3) calendar days after Contractor receives the service request ticket in the Contractor’s queue within the State’s service request tool.
• For Level 3 Deficiency, the Contractor shall fix the issue and close the service request ticket within fourteen (14) calendar days after Contractor receives the service request ticket in the Contractor’s queue within the State’s service request tool.
• Lastly, for Level 4 Deficiency, there is currently no defined service level agreement.

A: Version 1 and Version 2 refer to the major releases of CWS-CARES. CWS-CARES Version 1 will be released in October 2026 and will include the functionality necessary to transition work from CWS/CMS systems to CWS-CARES. After that first big release, there will be small, periodic improvements to CWS-CARES. Version 2 will be the next major release of additional functionality.

A: There is no impact on the ultimate project release date—CWS-CARES V1 is still expected to go live in October of 2026. However, some project activities, like Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) have been shifted to align with the new approach.

A: Here are a few of the most common references to CWS-CARES: