CARES SPOCs, CARES Technical Contacts, Implementation Coordinators, OCM Coordinators, County Leadership, Tribe Leadership, Probation Leadership, and State Leadership:
Following up on our communication from June 5, 2026 regarding the postponement of the CWS-CARES Production Simulation (Prod Sim) environment, we are providing an update on what to expect over the next five months, specifically for Prod Sim user access, key features, data, and related environments leading up to our October 2026 Go-Live.
The Prod Sim Environment – Revised Dates & Key Details
- June 22, 2026: Counties begin hands-on validation of converted legacy data using subject matter experts and end users to verify data accuracy, business functionality, and readiness for expanded statewide testing.
- 'Sealed & Sensitive' cases and referrals are temporarily removed from Prod Sim.
- All CWS-CARES Version 1 (V1) interfaces will be available.
- July 6, 2026: Additional county users join testing while teams begin validating backend functions, including reports, forms, and data extracts, to ensure the system is performing as expected before go-live.
- The planned Self-Paced Training curriculum will be available.
- The ability to run forms, reports, and extracts will be available.
- In a forthcoming communication, there will be additional details on the number of users and role prioritization to assist counties with determining who will participate.
- August 3, 2026: Prod Sim access opens for all 25,000 CWS/CMS users.
- Users continue their use of Prod Sim until CWS-CARES V1 Go-Live on October 26, 2026.
- September 26, 2026: ‘Sealed & Sensitive’ cases and referrals will be added to Prod Sim.
Other Environments – Dates & Key Details
- June 15, 2026: The V1 Readiness (EUST 3) Environment will be decommissioned at 8AM to migrate interface connections for upcoming training.
- This will impact interfaces such as Case Management Assessment (CMA), Structured Decision Making (SDM), CalSAWS Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED), Juvenile Network (JNET), and potentially others.
- V1 Readiness Environment users who are neither trainers nor granted access to the County Forms Development Environment will be onboarded to the Prod Sim environment according to the timeline above.
- June 15 – August 7, 2026: The new IBM-converted CWS/CMS forms will be available in County Forms Development Environment 102 on a rolling basis as they are developed for testing and validation by counties.
- During planned outages, these forms will be available in the Prod Sim environment and migration of those documents will begin on July 6, 2026.
- June 16, 2026: Training Environment 104 opens for Train-the-Trainer (TTT) staff to start their prerequisite training.
- County-identified users will begin to receive onboarding emails on June 12, 2026.
We acknowledge how critical these changes are for organizations, and that they have a direct impact on your readiness activities. We are dedicated to delivering on our commitments and working with you in partnership towards CWS-CARES V1 Go-Live on October 26, 2026. We will be providing forthcoming communication in the coming weeks that will outline in much greater detail the remaining critical dates, delivery of system or functionality fixes, and any outstanding items that will require workarounds until functionality can be fixed post Go-Live.
Please contact Customer Relations for questions: CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov