Frequently Asked Questions
Implementation Readiness Meetings
Q: What will Probation departments be required to enter into CWS-CARES?
A: Probation will be entering the same data into CWS-CARES as they do in CWS/CMS.
Q: Will the State stop requiring counties to submit certain quarterly or annual reports once the State has direct access to the data in CWS-CARES?
A: This will be a CDSS decision made program by program, once CDSS can validate that the data needed is being consistently entered into CWS-CARES.
Q: In the adoptions case, are court reports under court section or the documents section?
A: The Final Court Report is created within the Adoption case under the Court section in the left-hand navigation.
Q: Will CWS-CARES work with Dragon Naturally Speaking or similar dictation software?
A: The Project tested the native dictation features available in both Mac and Windows environments and did not identify any accessibility concerns. Counties are encouraged to validate third-party assistive technologies within their local environments, and to participate in End User Scenario Testing (EUST) 3 and Production Simulation to confirm that dictation functionality performs as expected in CWS-CARES.
Q: When will counties be able to see and tailor the process changes (as-is and to-be processes) for the new system?
A: Organizational Change Management (OCM) is developing these process maps and expects to provide them to counties for review and customization.
Q: What meetings are required attendance for county implementation team members?
A: Refer to the meeting matrix and the meeting schedule for required attendance. Implementation Coordinators (ICs) should always attend the bi-monthly Implementation meetings.
Q: For how many months after CWS-CARES goes live will counties have access to the CWS/CMS mainframe to pull data?
A: A six-month read-only period for CWS/CMS is planned after CWS-CARES goes live. Note that CWS/CMS mainframe data will no longer be updated once CWS-CARES is live, meaning the data will become stale. Although read-only access remains available for six months, the last data update will occur at the October 2026 Go-Live. Counties intending to perform a one-time data pull after Go-Live are strongly encouraged to do so as close to the Go-Live date as possible.
Q: How often will data in Production Simulation be refreshed?
A: The Production Simulation County Advisory Committee (CAC) is still determining the appropriate data refresh schedule for Production Simulation. Once the committee and project leadership finalize the refresh rate, the Project will communicate the schedule to all stakeholders.
Q: Can a contractor access the Person-Centered Intelligence Solution (P-CIS) as a stand-alone system outside of CWS-CARES to record the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment?
A: No. External partners, such as contractors, cannot access P-CIS outside of CWS-CARES. Any CANS assessment conducted as part of a child welfare case must be completed through CWS-CARES.
Q: Will converted documents from CWS/CMS to CARES be the same format that they were already saved as, or is there a standard format that they will be converted to?
A: Yes, documents converted from CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES will retain their original file formats. The conversion process preserves the document format as stored in CWS/CMS rather than converting documents into a standardized format.