CWS-CARES Public Library

CWS-CARES is grouped into Service Areas. A service area is a type of service offered by CWS-CARES related to child welfare program and practices. Intake is the initial entry point into Child Welfare Services and includes processes to:​

• Screen: capture Hotline requests, gather initial incident, person, and allegation information, and support decision-making to investigate or refer to preventative services or community-based connections.​

• Investigate: conduct interviews, make in-person contacts, gather records and consult/collaborate with Tribes, resources, formal and informal supports for the purpose of making a comprehensive and informed evaluation of child safety and risk. ​

• Refer: offer referrals to preventative and supportive services within the community, and/or help the client identify resources within their own network. ​

CARES V1 supports improvement of many processes and additionally seeks to mitigate numerous pain points identified by county constituents in the current system.​ 

CARES V1 standardizes processes within the parameters of state and federal policy (guidelines, regulations, codes, laws), while allowing flexibility and autonomy where appropriate for the variance in local practice culture among the 58 counties. ​

CARES V1 guides and supports staff in the steps necessary to determine the purpose for a call, redirect the call appropriately, and reduce unnecessary information gathering on families. Additional pathways at screening (beyond the documentation of a child abuse and neglect report) also assist users in documenting and redirecting the work performed at the hotline level. ​

CARES V1 provides helper text and core practice guidance, adapts screens to the type of call, decreases superfluous information gathering, and improves the integrity of the information collected.

What is SOGIE?  ​
Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE) refers to the status of any person that discloses their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression during the screening process or while a child welfare investigation or case is open. SOGIE data collected includes sex at birth, sexual orientation, and gender identity.​ The State will improve SOGIE and race/ethnicity data collection to reflect an individuals’ identity, which in turn will assist in identifying appropriate services and support, and equitable service delivery. ​

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

To ease the transition from CWS/CMS to CARES, the Implementation Team continues to partner with Organizational Change Management Coordinators and Organizational Change Management Advisory Workgroup Representatives from the counties.​

Organizational Change Management (OCM) Coordinators​

Each county has a designated Organizational Change Management (OCM) Coordinator that supports their county by:​

• Sharing information about CARES with their teams.​

• Tailoring communications and other CARES work products to be relevant to their county's individual needs.​

• Strengthening feedback loops within their organization and providing insight about their team's experience throughout this transition.​

In spring 2024, OCM Coordinators and other representatives from each county were invited to attend a two-day OCM Training to equip them with the tools and skills needed to support their teams.​

• Agenda: Training participants learned basic principles of OCM, discussed common challenges that arise during change, and identified strategies for addressing challenges.​

• Knowledge sharing: The training sessions provided an opportunity for participants from different counties to share their experiences with change and exchange lessons learned and best practices.​

• Resources: Participants also received a toolkit of information to help them start communicating and building awareness about CARES within their organizations.​

Organizational Change Management (OCM) Advisory Workgroup Representatives​

In Fall 2023, select representatives from each region were also identified by their Regional Chairs to engage in OCM through the OCM Advisory Workgroup.​

• Monthly meetings give representatives the chance to provide ongoing guidance and oversight into the activities and communications developed for CARES end users and other stakeholders.​

• Workgroup participants provide input on OCM work products and serve as an open channel of communication and feedback.​

• They also help to understand and speak to ongoing change management risks and issues that may affect the end-user adoption of CARES as V1 is developed and implemented.​

As the CARES project progresses, OCM Coordinators and OCM Advisory Workgroup representatives will have additional opportunities to participate in OCM activities.​ 

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

As CWS-CARES moves towards Go-Live, we continue to receive inquiries from users like you from across the State. We welcome your questions because they give us an opportunity to better track which questions are being asked frequently so that we can proactively draft communications and ensure the response is disseminated widely. ​

If you have a question:
1. Email the Implementation Team or Customer Relations Team.​
2. Raise a question in other project meetings.​
3. If a question cannot be answered in these forums, there is a good chance it will make its way to the Inquiry Response Team (IRT).​

After a question is submitted: The IRT Lead reviews our repository of previous questions to ensure the question hasn’t already been answered. If not, the lead records the new question and works with subject matter experts (SMEs) to draft a response and then reviews it with the IRT team. ​The team decides if the response requires executive approval, if it should be posted as an FAQ to the CWDS website, or if any further clarification is needed. Lastly, the IRT lead finalizes any edits, takes record of the response, and works with the original team that received the question to respond. CWS-CARES values your questions and appreciates your patience while we draft responses.​

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

The CARES Implementation Team is a group within the CARES project team focused on helping Counties, CDSS, Probation, and Tribes with Title IV-E agreements prepare for CARES V1 Go-Live in October 2026. The team is comprised of Implementation Leads (ILs) who are assigned to each of these organizations to serve as single point of contact for all CARES-related tasks and questions.​

ILs collaborate with Implementation Coordinators (ICs) from each organization to regularly review and update the CARES V1 Go-Live Readiness Checklist. The checklist includes people, process, and technology readiness tasks organizations must complete to be ready for Go-Live. ​

Among the key responsibilities of the ILs is learning the new CARES V1 features and functionality so they can provide system demonstrations and answer questions about the new software prior to end user training delivery.​

To stay informed about CARES V1, ILs attend product development meetings, demonstrations, and other project discussions. ILs also play an important role in routing questions received from the organizations, sharing feedback, and pulling in additional subject matter expertise as needed for the completion of readiness tasks. ​

ILs are of critical importance to the success of CARES V1 because they because they provide organizations the support they need to get ready for Go-Live. Additionally, they create visibility into the status and overall health of Go-Live Readiness activities between now and October 2026.​

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.

County Consultants are subject matter experts (SMEs) representing the interests of counties. There are currently 24 County Consultants representing 14 counties actively participating as a SME in policy, program requirements, outcome measures, and county user needs and preferences. They serve across more than a dozen project teams, such as Intake, Case Management, and Resource Management.​

County Consultants are full-time, contracted project resources selected though a collaboration between counties, the County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA), the Department of Social Services (CDSS) and the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration (OTSI). They play a critical role on CWS-CARES, as they help provide the level of engagement needed on various teams while preventing the disruption of services to families and children at risk. Most of them have a broad background in Child Welfare and have years of service and experience in their Counties.

Counties represented include: Kern, Los Angeles, Madera, Monterey, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Francisco, Stanislaus, and Yolo. ​CWDA also contracts with staff with previous experience in Fresno, Orange, Placer, San Luis Obispo, and Sacramento counties.​ ​

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.

To support the learning journey from CWS/CMS to CARES, the Implementation Training team has devoted itself to creating, building, and delivering an effective training program to prepare users to complete their work processes in CARES beginning the day of Go-Live.​

Early CARES training audience analysis indicated that a blended learning approach would best meet the needs and preferences of CARES users. The Training team developed the CARES training approach to reflect this preference by pairing on-demand eLearning, instructor-led training and over-the-shoulder coaching support at Go-Live and beyond. The interactive combination of self-paced eLearning with live end-user training offers a dynamic learning journey to support varied learning styles while providing flexibility across Organizations.  

On-demand eLearning is the foundation of the immersive learning experience, with end-to-end CARES child welfare workflows built directly within CARES. Integrated through CARES, the small, digestible units will typically take less than 15 minutes to complete, and include hands-on simulated practice, workflows, and work-related scenarios. On-demand learning will be opened to all end-users beginning Summer 2026 as a prerequisite to live instructor-led training.​

Instructor-led training (ILT) continues the learning journey by focusing on cross-functional areas, complex learning areas, skill building, areas not currently in the legacy system such as Resource Family Approval (RFA), Family First Protection Services ACT (FFPSA) Adoptions, and other potential learning needs folded into CARES. ILT will be delivered via a hybrid partnership between the California RTAs, County trainers, Juvenile Probation, Organizations, and the CARES Training team. Trainers will deliver training over the 12 weeks leading up to Go-Live in October 2026. ​

Supporting training materials for Instructor-led training include coaching from trainers and Super Users and Go-Live Command Center Support. More ILT and eLearning materials will be made editable and released to Organizations in 4 cycles leading up to Go-Live. ​

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.
 

Imagine CWS-CARES as a big city, bustling with information flowing everywhere. CWS-CARES content management acts like the city's library, a content repository so to speak, and archive system ensuring that all crucial documents are stored electronically, organized, quickly accessed, and secure. This eliminates files stored in various places, and time wasted searching for content. Just like a library adds new books, CWS-CARES content management allows for easy upload of electronic documents and scanning of paper documents. Librarians categorize books; CWS-CARES content management uses metadata (descriptive labels) and indexing to classify documents. This makes searching easier, like finding a book by title or author. 

As a library offers designated areas for group study, CWS-CARES content management facilitates document sharing and collaboration, allowing staff to work on the same document, or route the document through workflow. A library also tracks who borrows books. CWS-CARES content management maintains an audit trail, recording who accessed or modified documents, for better accountability. Content management is a vital part of CWS-CARES, ensuring all the crucial information within the system is organized, secure, searchable, and available.

CWS-CARES content management has 3 parts: document generation, document management, and eSignature. Learn more about these in The Three Parts of Content Management​.

Originally published in the CWS-CARES Explorer.