Strategic Adjustment for CWS-CARES Readiness – 12/23/2025

Child Welfare Leadership, CWS-CARES Points of Contact: SPOCs, Implementation Coordinators, OCM Coordinators, Probation Points of Contact, Tribe Points of Contact:

Following our October 29, 2025, communication regarding the federal shutdown, APDU, and funding impacts, and in response to recent feedback from our federal partners, strategic adjustments have been made to the CWS-CARES readiness approach. These decisions, made collaboratively with the CWS-CARES Board of Directors, which includes a representative from the County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA), are designed to ensure the successful statewide CWS-CARES Go-Live in October 2026.  

The originally proposed CWS-CARES "Production Pilot" phase, which involved a full cutover for five counties starting in August 2026, is no longer feasible. Continuing with this plan would extend the Go-Live date beyond our current funding timeline, which would be challenging given state and federal budget constraints.

In place of the Production Pilot, we are implementing a Production Simulation environment starting in May 2026. The Production Simulation environment will be made available to 58 counties (child welfare and probation), Tribes with California Title IV-E Agreements, and state partners. Child Welfare Departments (CWDs) in all 58 counties will be expected to participate in the Production Simulation environment. Guidance will be issued to outline these expectations, to be fully executed using remaining and previously allocated Core Constituent Participation (CCP) funding. This environment will mirror the full CWS-CARES Version 1 system. It features CWS/CMS, CARES-Live, and RFA Greenfield converted data for referrals and cases, interfaces, and analytics enabling all participating organizations to test and validate operations in a realistic production-like setting. Converted external system data will be integrated as it becomes available. We are replacing the Production Pilot and planned testing activities with this expanded Production Simulation strategy. 

Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) will engage stakeholders to plan the Production Simulation rollout and determine the most effective way to manage county participation in testing and validation activities. The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) will provide further instructions through forthcoming guidance.

Key Benefits: 

• Statewide Early Access: Rather than limiting early access to a small group of counties, this environment provides access to all staff across all organizations that will be system users. This environment will start to be available five months prior to Go-Live. Guidance on usage and implementation will be forthcoming. 

• Real-World Validation: The simulation mirrors a live production environment, populated with fully converted data, referrals, and cases from every county. Staff will practice workflows, run reports and forms, perform validation on data, see the workflow with interfaces, and understand how role-based access controls will function.  

• Enhanced Readiness: Users will simulate actual business processes, enhance their system exposure with hands-on experiences, and coordinate testing and activities collaboratively across organizations. All organizations will practice and utilize the new CWS-CARES Service Desk processes within the context of the new system and its tools (e.g., logging tickets, tracking issues, managing knowledge articles). 

Path Forward Timeline: 

To support this revised strategy and ensure proactive planning, we are preparing the following: 

• A standing monthly leadership meeting between the CDSS, the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration (OTSI) Directorates, selected County Human Services Directors, and CWDA: This group will provide guidance and direction on refreshing areas of stakeholder engagement and address escalations as needed to support the successful implementation of CWS‑CARES.
• Engagement with and seek funding for CalSAWS so that the Foster Care Eligibility Determination (FCED) is available throughout the Production Simulation period:  The ability for counties to test FCED using converted, real case data throughout the Production Simulation period is essential to the success of this approach.
• Focused areas of stakeholder engagement to support this approach: We will establish three key areas of focus, likely leveraging existing project workgroups, to drive critical input from counties, Tribes with California Title IV-E Agreements, and state partners on key activities to make this approach successful. Beginning in January 2026, we will partner with CWDA to recruit and confirm county participants for these workgroups. These include:
  • Training and Implementation 
  • Production Simulation 
  • Service Desk: Incident Management, Request Fulfillment, Escalation processes, and Interim Governance for system changes 
• Pilot Workgroup Sunset: The original Pilot workgroup will be dissolved (sunset) as its purpose has been superseded by Production Simulation and the statewide readiness focus.
• Communication Evaluation: We will also gather feedback on our communication channels and improve how we support you through this transition. We want to identify exactly what is working and where we need to adjust our outreach to better support you. 

This is a significant change driven by external constraints and is imperative to meet our October 2026 Go-Live date. We acknowledge the challenges for all organizational partners and reaffirm our commitment to support readiness efforts. Your partnership remains vital as we proceed with this refined path to a successful statewide CWS-CARES implementation in October 2026. 

Action Required

No action is required.