CWS-CARES Public Library

The CWS-CARES Organizational Change Management (OCM) Team disseminated an Engagement Survey to the 58 county child-welfare agency implementation teams (Implementation, OCM, and Training Coordinators and their backups) and representatives from the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) divisions involved in the project: the Child Care Licensing Division (CCLD); Children and Family Services Division (CFSD); and the Research, Automation, and Data Division (RADD). ​

Purpose ​

The purpose of this Survey was to gauge the level of preparedness for change at Organizations on behalf of representatives involved with the project and understand their perception of CWS-CARES at this stage in the project. ​

​Timing​

The survey launched September 2nd and closed September 30th, 2024. Note that the Survey’s window from September 2nd to 30th coincided with prototype demonstrations beginning September 19th, so several recipients had not yet participated in product demonstrations.​

Format ​

15 questions were grouped into the following dimensions: Demographics; Compelling Purpose; Product; Stakeholder Engagement; Training and Support; Communications; and Preparation for Change. ​

​Responses ​

The Survey’s overall response rate was 120 out of 200 (60%). 59 out of 61 (97%) Organizations participated. Nearly 60% of respondents have worked in a child welfare-related role for over 10 years, indicating a strong knowledge base for the needs of child welfare work.​

Free Responses - Themes, Summary of Responses, and Mitigation Strategies​

The final question of the Survey was a free response question asking respondents if there are questions or comments the project team should review. The free responses were then shared with the relevant impacted teams. These included the OCM Team, Implementation Team, Training Team, Strategic Communications Team, External Systems Workgroup, and Product-as-a-Service (PaaS) Team. All of the teams reviewed the language and suggested mitigation strategies that are either upcoming in the project roadmap or are new ideas leveraging existing material.​

Summary of Findings​

Aggregated results indicate that the majority of respondents agree or strongly agree with statements such as “I believe CWS-CARES will meet future program needs of child welfare work” and “I am aware of ways to provide feedback about CWS-CARES.” ​

​Questions resulting in the highest numbers of disagree or strongly disagree responses were related to external systems (“I understand the impacts that CWS-CARES will have on my Organization's use of external systems.”) and preparation for change (“I am confident I will be able to adopt CWS-CARES with ease in the future.”). ​

​These findings have been shared and discussed with the appropriate project teams, and mitigation strategies are being developed to address key areas that need improvement.​

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.