CWS-CARES Public Library

The CWS-CARES project team is partnering with Evident Change to build the Structured Decision Making (SDM) Interface. Today, workers complete the following assessments using Evident Change’s Web SDM:

• Hotline Assessments at Intake
• Both Safety and Risk Assessments (in home, substitute, and congregate care provider) during Investigations
• Reunification/Risk Reassessment in Case Management

At go-live, workers will have a seamless integration from CARES V1 to Evident Change using Single Sign On (SSO). To prevent duplicate entry, CARES will automatically pre-fill incident, person, and allegation information where possible and Evident Change will automatically populate assessment information and decisions in CARES. Interface development was recently completed by CWS-CARES and Evident Change, and the team is in the process of full End-to-End testing through August 2024. 

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

Data conversion is the technical process of moving data from one format to another so that it becomes compatible with CARES V1. This ensures that historical data from legacy systems, including CWS/CMS, CARES-Live, which includes CANS data, and other selected systems will be available to use in CARES V1. Data conversion follows an incremental development process that is driven by the overall Product Roadmap. This means that historical data from CWS/CMS, CARES-Live, and other systems will move over to CARES V1 on a milestone-by-milestone basis. An analysis is performed at each milestone to determine what data will transfer over to CARES V1. The team collaborates to ensure the data is of high quality and transfers it over to the CARES Data Infrastructure (CDI) data conversion staging area for initial testing. Once the milestone has been completed, the data conversion team then transfers the historical data from the staging area to CARES V1, for additional testing and validation. The end result of this effort is near 100% availability of the historical data from the legacy systems mentioned above in a single new source of truth: CARES V1. 

Milestone Design

• Identify which elements from CWS/CMS, CARES-LIVE, and selected external systems should be converted.
• Address any data quality concerns (e.g., incomplete or incompatible records) for the elements being converted.
• Transfer the historical data to a data conversion staging area within CDI, and test to make sure everything transferred as expected.

Milestone Development

• Transfer the historical data from the staging area to CARES V1, and test to make sure everything transferred as expected.

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

CWS-CARES is partnering with the California Statewide Automated Welfare System (CalSAWS) to build an interface and exchange data, and this interface is called Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED). 

When a child has been placed in a foster home, forms have to be completed and sent manually to CalSAWS. Staff might call, fax, or email information and wait for a response. The foster family might not receive timely payments due to delays in processing. 

In the future, the FCED interface will allow data to be sent and received quickly with a near real-time exchange of information. It enables an eligibility determination to be performed with a click of a button, and eliminates duplicate data entry in different systems thus reducing the chance of typos or inconsistencies. Staff will receive a notification when the determination is complete. 

The FCED interface reduces the burden of users needing to re-enter the same information in both CWS-CARES and CalSAWS with new automation. Paper forms will also be automated through FCED. This facilitates secure and efficient information sharing between different agencies and departments involved in child welfare cases. Automating tasks like eligibility validation and benefit calculations can reduce the administrative burden on workers. 



This back-and-forth data exchange through FCED allows CWS-CARES and CalSAWS to share information. This is just one of the many interfaces that CWS-CARES is building to transform child welfare services in California.

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

Picture this: You’re moving from an old house to a new house. What do you pack for the new house? What items do you decide to leave behind? Here, we explain why moving documents from CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES is like moving from an old to a new house.

The benefits of moving documents to CWS-CARES include the following: 
CWS-CARES is like a spacious, modern house. There's plenty of room for everything (data) and the layout is designed for efficiency (optimized workflows).

Over 72 million existing CWS/CMS documents from the last 25+ years were uploaded from CWS/CMS mainframe format and converted into compatible documents for CWS-CARES (e.g., doc, jpg, pdf, and xls formats). 

The new CWS-CARES “house” will include features that the old one didn't, such as improved security. We scanned all the documents against viruses and malware during conversion and security is enforced in the CARES application and infrastructure. 

Moving documents from CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES provides an opportunity to archive irrelevant information, freeing up storage space and improving data accuracy.

Until CWS-CARES launches in 2026, documents will continue to be uploaded to CWS/CMS every minute! We convert approximately 100,000 documents from CWS/CMS to CWS-CARES on a weekly basis. 

Migrating documents is a long and complex process, and we’ve been working on this since September 2022. Thank you to the County IT and Data SMEs who have been participating in data activities. Their continuous efforts and participation have been essential to data migration success. We extend our gratitude to every member of the County IT/Security, CWS-CARES Data Conversion and Data Infrastructure teams. 

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.