A: The CWS-CARES project will cover the costs associate with integration. There will be no additional costs impacting county budgets for these integration activities.

Based on the planned CWS-CARES Version 2 implementation date, the State expects to take over county costs associated with SafeMeasures starting on July 1, 2028. Counties will be responsible for the existing contract and access until June 30, 2028. Counties must continue to submit an Advance Planning Document (APD) to the California Department of Social Services prior to executing, renewing, or amending the agreement or paying for associated services. Please see County Fiscal Letter 23/24-12 for APD submission requirements and details. This means counties shall plan to end their contracts on June 30, 2028, and will no longer be responsible for these costs after this date.

A: SafeMeasure and SDM should not be treated as an External System. They will not require the same level of effort or planning as external systems, particularly for tasks like data conversion, ongoing operations, or decommissioning.

A: To enhance efficiency and data-driven decision making with CWS-CARES Version 1, SDM® assessments will be seamlessly integrated into the CWS-CARES platform via single sign-on. The CWS-CARES Project is currently planning the SafeMeasures integration. Ultimately, SafeMeasures and SDM tools will be embedded into CWS-CARES, and 25 years of historical data collected through these tools will be accessible.

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.

A: There is no plan to decommission Safe Measures. CWS-CARES is working alongside Safe Measures to make sure all reporting needs are covered. Currently, the data team is working on a cross walk, or data exchange, to compare what reports are completed in Safe Measures, CWS/CMS, and CWS-CARES so that we can efficiently identify reports already built in Safe Measures that won’t need to be rebuilt for CWS-CARES. Any state/federal required reports that are not built in Safe Measures will be built into CWS-CARES.

A: CWS-CARES will have a “Data checking tool” that can be run to make sure that we have entered known data related to Federal and State Reports. CWS-CARES will also have the ability to see who edits records and when they are edited. CWS-CARES will not have CFSR functions. However, we support CFSR with clearer ways to find information such as a structured contact note, clear documentation of case start dates, concurrent plan, service provision, etc.

A: Yes, CWS-CARES will include functionality that allows social workers to view changes made to a record over time. The CARES Data Infrastructure (CDI) will record all data changes (create, update, and delete transactions) to support supervision, auditing, and analytics.

A: CWS-CARES will provide a variety of reporting and analytics features to support not only state and federal requirements, but also to track operational metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by Service Area.

A: Yes. Data to satisfy AFCARS data element requirements will be built and tested at every milestone throughout the project development. AFCARS data is used to develop the federal California-Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) outcome measures, which are monitored over time.