Frequently Asked Questions
Stakeholder Briefing
Q: Will there be a "train-the-trainer" approach to get county trainers ready before Go-Live?
A: Yes. Train-the-Trainer (TTT) runs June 15 – August 14, 2026 and prepares county trainers and Super Users to lead training within their own organizations ahead of Go-Live. Each trainer completes foundational, self-paced Salesforce Enablement training beforehand, then attends TTT sessions (estimated up to two weeks, adjusted for prior experience with CWS/CMS and CWS-CARES). Ongoing office hours and a support channel continue through October to keep trainers supported. For questions, contact OTSICWDSTraining@otsi.ca.gov.
Q: What type of information should be entered in the 'Additional Information' field on the CWS-CARES Person Profile screen?
A: The 'Additional Information' field allows workers to enter any relevant information they consider pertinent. This field is intentionally open-ended to accommodate individual county practice.
Q: How many licenses to the Production Simulation environment will counties get?
A: All users of CWS/CMS will be able to access the Production Simulation environment.
Q: When will the training environment be released?
A: The training environment will be accessible as part of the Instructor-Led training.
Q: Will Person Merge functionality be available in CWS-CARES to address duplicate client or person records?
A: Yes, Person Merge functionality will be available in CWS-CARES.
Q: How will counties handle manual business processes or workarounds that are not yet supported in CWS-CARES at Go-Live?
A: These will continue to be identified throughout the Production Simulation period as business processes are reviewed. Contingency planning will then be included in the Organizational Change Management (OCM) work.
Q: Will data entry into the CWS-CARES Production Simulation map over to CWS/CMS, or will dual entry be needed?
A: Data entered into the Production Simulation will not transfer to CWS/CMS. Since the simulation is strictly a practice environment, CWS/CMS remains the sole statewide system of record. Consequently, any data required for official records will still require entry into CWS/CMS.
Q: How many users per county/organization will be able to use the Production Simulation environment?
A: Active CWS/CMS users (approx. 25,000) will be able to access CWS-CARES Production Simulation. Additionally, it will incorporate their role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure their permissions accurately mirror the live production environment.
Q: What is the Opeeka Interface?
A: The Opeeka Interface will have the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths Assessment (CANS) assessment highlighted as well as multiple other assessments available (separate from Structured Decision Making (SDM) which have the more change based assessments). This will mirror how the CANS assessment is currently done, pulling it into CWS-CARES using the Opeeka Interface (referring to the system look and feel).
Q: Why is Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE) data being changed to read-only in CWS-CARES?
A: In accordance with federal reporting requirements that changed under federal executive orders, the child welfare information system cannot collect certain SOGIE-related data. Because this functionality was already developed for CWS-CARES, it has been moved to read-only, and the system will not allow this data collection until reporting requirements change.