A: CWS-CARES is working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which is expected to be shared with the counties and other organizations a few months prior to the CWS-CARES Go-Live scheduled for Quarter 4, 2026. The MOU will capture the basic principles of data security, the basic principles of data privacy, and expectations from users as applicable to CWS-CARES. 

A: The model and budget were approved by the Federal Administration for Children Youth and Families and the Child Welfare Digital Services Board of Directors which is composed of representatives from the County Welfare Directors Association, the California Department of Social Services, the State Department of Finance, Health and Human Services Agency, the California Department of Technology, and the State Office of Technology and Systems Integration.

During the initial planning phases of the CWS-CARES project (then referred to as CWS-NS), the Child Welfare functionality was divided into modules referred to as Digital Services: Intake, Case Management, Courts, Eligibility, Certification and Licensing, Financial Management, Resource Management, and Administration. The County Welfare Directors Association worked with the State and Federal partners to secure a project budget for Counties participation in the development and implementation of the new system.

Core Counties were solicited to participate in the development of each module. To balance the need for diverse county input with the size of the working team, the number of Counties for each digital service was targeted to be 6, depending on the module and the counties’ willingness to participate. Case Management, due to its size, was broken into 4 areas with 6 counties in each, designated CM 1-4. The CWDA Executive Liaison was in communication with each County Human Services Director and Child Welfare Director and obtained and confirmed each County’s participation; later the subsequent Executive Liaison re-confirmed each County’s participation prior to the “kickoff” of system development and then a third acting Executive Liaison reconfirmed participation, realigned a Resource Management County, and added 2 additional Financial Management counties based on resources and requirements at that time.

Core County Constituents are county employees who remain in their existing county roles and are authorized by their counties to provide subject matter expertise on a part-time basis to inform the design of CWS-CARES. The county submits claims to the project based on the Core Constituents hours worked on the project. Please see the Core Constituent Participation Model for a visual aid. 

A: Counties and Tribes will participate in data conversion activities in three ways:

• Counties in the CWS-CARES Org Data Conversion Workgroup assist in validating field mappings of data elements and list of values mappings for data that will be converted from the CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES and provide county specific usages of fields and data in the system. 
• Counties and Tribes also participate in the Data Quality Workgroup assisting with data cleanup efforts in the CWS/CMS, which helps ensure high quality data is converted. 
• Core constituent counties participate in validating data that has been converted from the CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES. 

A: Counties can upload Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) in Child Welfare System-California Automated Response and Engagement System (CWS-CARES). Documenting background checks is a core functionality of resource family approval (RFA) that allows for each individual required to have background checks, be documented, and cleared. CWS-CARES can record background checks.

A: CWS-CARES will provide a similar mechanism for counties to continue to receive daily data downloads as they do today from CWS/CMS. CWS-CARES data is replicated from the production Salesforce system to Snowflake that is the data source for extracts and reporting. CWS-CARES will provide organizations with additional detail on the CWS-CARES’ data extract capabilities.

A: The project will continue to support the current Dedicated and Co-existent models with CARES to avoid any disruption to counties. The project will continue to review and document the impact of both models, and any new information will be shared as it becomes available.

A: Currently, no. Workers need to complete the SDM tool before submitting a referral to their supervisor.

A: Data will be available for upload and download. The specific technical capabilities for upload and download, such as SFTP, are under review and will be shared with counties soon. Child Welfare Services-California Automated Response Engagement System (CWS-CARES) users will have the ability to upload and download documents and associate them to CWS-CARES entities such as Case or Person.

A: CWS-CARES will provide training for the CWS-CARES system using a hybrid training approach. The CWS-CARES V1 hybrid training approach supports the delivery of training to all 121 Implementation Organizations (Orgs). In alignment with the County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA), Tribal Consultation, and the CARES project, this hybrid approach facilitates a partnership across the Regional Training Academies, Juvenile Probation, Organizations, and the CARES project training team to deliver training statewide. CalSAWS will provide training for the changes in CalSAWS for external users.

A: Payments will continue to be administered through county-level systems.