CWDS Bulletins

CARES SPOCs, Implementation Coordinators, OCM Coordinators, County Leadership, Tribe Leadership, Probation Leadership, and State Leadership:

CWDS Website Update: The FCED Hub 

We are excited to introduce the FCED Hub, a new page on the CWDS website for the latest information and resources on Foster Care Eligibility and Determination (FCED). Explore eligibility demonstrations, Governance Committee meeting materials, and other helpful resources — now all in one convenient location.  

To access the hub, visit the CWDS Portals page, select FCED Hub, and log in using your county email address. 

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Recap: First Biweekly Binti Data Conversion Meeting on Thursday, October 30 

The first biweekly External Systems Data Conversion meeting for Binti counties was held on Thursday, October 30, 2025 from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM. 105 participants joined the session across the 43 Binti counties. Thank you to everyone who participated! 

The meeting recording has been posted to the External Systems Portal; the presentation and Q&A document will be available in the coming weeks. Join us November 13, 2025 from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM.  for the next Binti Data Conversion session. 

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Share Your Feedback and Subscribe 

Thank you for following our progress! Share your feedback on this CWS-CARES Weekly Digest here: CWS-CARES Weekly Digest Feedback Form. Subscribe to future issues here: CWS-CARES Weekly Digest Subscription Form.   

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Action Required

We request that all CARES Single Point of Contacts (SPOCs) and Implementation Coordinators coordinate and distribute the CARES Weekly Digest to all staff impacted by CWS-CARES, at their discretion. 

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

October 30, 2025 UPDATE: The California Department of Technology (CDT) deployed their fix yesterday. Along with the patch applied yesterday by the CWDS Office, the www.ca.gov website latency issue has been resolved. Users should not experience any issue or delays when accessing the CWDS website (https://cwds.ca.gov).

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The California Department of Technology (CDT) is experiencing an issue with their shared statewide template. This issue is causing a latency issue with the www.ca.gov websites, including the CWDS website, https://cwds.ca.gov. When attempting to access the website, users will experience delays, or find the site unreachable, as the page’s contents are loading.

The CDT will deploy a fix to improve the latency later today. The CWDS Office has already applied a patch to mitigate the issue. Loading delays should be reduced.

We will provide additional updates as we receive them.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with the CWDS website, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

This communication is a follow-up to the October 17, 2025, correspondence on the status of the CWS-CARES Project's Advance Planning Document Update (APDU), specific implementation activities, and the resulting impacts of the ongoing federal shutdown. 

The federal shutdown has impacted the submission and subsequent approval of the CWS-CARES APDU by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The absence of approved federal funding necessitates a suspension of specific implementation activities. Formally approved funding is a prerequisite for executing any CWS-CARES service contracts or contract amendments. To ensure fiscal prudence and preserve existing funding, most implementation activities will be temporarily paused effective November 3, 2025. All other implementation activities not explicitly listed below are paused pending further guidance. 

The following key implementation activities will proceed as scheduled or with necessary adjustments: 

1. Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) 3 Training Development and Delivery: This workstream will continue as planned. The Training Advisory Workgroup meetings will focus exclusively on EUST 3.
    
2. Process Information Sessions: These sessions will continue as planned for all of the remaining topics: Courts, Probation, Resource Family Approval (RFA), Resource Management (RM), Financial Management (FM), and Administrative Services. The OCM Advisory Workgroup meetings will focus exclusively on Process Information Session preparation. 
    
3. Organization Readiness: This activity continues with modifications. We will monitor and report Organization Readiness status to relevant leadership and organizations. However, existing monthly county Implementation Readiness Meetings will be canceled and replaced by a new series of regionally aligned group meetings, in some cases led by different facilitators and using a revised format. These meetings will be used to collect and report on Organization Readiness status to leadership and partner organizations.  

Updates on Sandbox, Process Simulation, and Pilot activities will be shared in a subsequent communication. 

Significant areas of the CWS-CARES Project are continuing without interruption including prototype and build reviews, Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST), forms, reports, data conversion and external systems activities. Your organizations should continue all work, including associated readiness activities. 

The CWS-CARES Version 1 Go-Live Date remains October 2026. 

We appreciate your understanding and continued partnership as we navigate these required adjustments. We will provide continuous updates as decisions are formalized. 

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

The California Department of Technology (CDT) is experiencing an issue with their shared statewide template. This issue is causing a latency issue with the www.ca.gov websites, including the CWDS website, https://cwds.ca.gov. When attempting to access the website, users will experience delays, or find the site unreachable, as the page’s contents are loading.

The CDT will deploy a fix to improve the latency later today. The CWDS Office has already applied a patch to mitigate the issue. Loading delays should be reduced.

We will provide additional updates as we receive them.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with the CWDS website, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.

All CWS and Probation SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

The CWS/CMS application will be in read-only mode for one hour during the time change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time on Sunday, November 2, 2025. To prevent duplicate time stamps, users will not be able to write to the database starting at 1:00 AM, after the clocks have been moved back from 2:00 AM. The application will return to the normal read/write mode at 2:00 AM Standard Time.

This will not affect CARES-Live.

Action Required

Contact the IBM Help Desk (800-428-8268) if the CWS/CMS application has not returned to read/write mode after 2:00 AM Standard Time.

All Pilot County RFA Implementation Coordinators and SPOCs:

The CWS-CARES team has scheduled maintenance activity for the CWS-CARES production environment for Thursday, October 30, 2025, beginning at 5:00 PM and concluding at 8:00 PM. During the maintenance window, the CWS-CARES Resource Family Approval (RFA) Application Submission, Review, and Approval Process will be accessible for pilot counties Fresno, Placer, and Santa Clara.

There is no anticipated impact for CWS-CARES users. We are sharing this information in the unlikely circumstance that there is an actual impact during the scheduled maintenance window and the CWS-CARES application becomes inaccessible.

Action Required

No action required from end-users during this maintenance window.

If users experience any issues with the CWS-CARES, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CWS-CARES County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours, and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.

CARES SPOCs, Implementation Coordinators, OCM Coordinators, County Leadership, Tribe Leadership, Probation Leadership, and State Leadership:
 

Data Dictionary V0.06 – Now Available

CWS-CARES Data Dictionary V0.06 is now available on the Microsoft Teams Channel: CARES Data Dictionary under Files. 

The Intro tab of the CWS-CARES Data Dictionary highlights all updates in the new version, making it easy to see what is new or changed.

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County Forms: AEM vs Word

Having trouble deciding whether to build a form in Word or Adobe AEM? Here are some key questions to ask: 

• Does the final output (CWS-CARES generated document) need to be a Word document? Use Word as the template.    

• Does this document require collaboration with members outside of CWS-CARES before finalizing content for generation in CWS-CARES? Use Word. 
• Does this document require track changes and/or commenting to be turned on during collaboration before finalizing content for generation in CWS-CARES? Use Word.
• Is there a need for the template to have advanced features? Use Adobe AEM.
• Does this document require CWS-CARES to automatically trigger e-Sign? Good news: you can use either Word or Adobe AEM!

If you have any questions about the features available for Word or Adobe AEM, please reach out to CWDS CARES Forms.

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Dreamforce Conference Recap

The CWS-CARES Project attended Salesforce’s Dreamforce Conference from October 14-16 to gain a deeper understanding of the Salesforce platform and to connect with our partners.

Kimberly Glenn participated in a Health and Human Services Panel to help other government agencies understand how CWS-CARES is solutioning for the children and families of California.

Julie Al-Huneidi (Director of Product Development) and Arun Sukumaran (Architecture and Engineering Chief) participated in a panel to help government agencies understand the importance of building a Center of Excellence (CoE) for their Salesforce projects with their Salesforce Customer Success and Professional Services partners.

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October 2025 Stakeholder Briefing Recap

Thanks to all those who attended the October 2025 Stakeholder Briefing! Three hundred and two participants attended, with representation from 39 counties and four partner organizations.

The recording of the session is now available on the CWS-CARES Stakeholder Webinar Materials page on the CWDS website. The accessible slide deck and Q&A document will be posted in coming weeks.

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Share Your Feedback and Subscribe

Thank you for following our progress! Share your feedback on this CWS-CARES Weekly Digest here: CWS-CARES Weekly Digest Feedback Form. Subscribe to future issues here: CWS-CARES Weekly Digest Subscription Form. 

Action Required

We request that all CARES Single Point of Contacts (SPOCs) and Implementation Coordinators coordinate and distribute the CARES Weekly Digest to all staff impacted by CWS-CARES, at their discretion. 

All Pilot County RFA Implementation Coordinators and SPOCs:

The CWS-CARES team has scheduled maintenance activity for the CWS-CARES production environment for Friday, October 31, 2025, beginning at 6:00 AM and concluding at 8:00 AM. During the maintenance window, the CWS-CARES Resource Family Approval (RFA) Application Submission, Review, and Approval Process will be accessible for pilot counties Fresno, Placer, and Santa Clara.

During the maintenance window, document related functionality in the CARES application will not be accessible.

Action Required

No action required from end-users during this maintenance window.

If users experience any issues with the CWS-CARES, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CWS-CARES County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours, and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.

All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:

The CARES-Live team has scheduled maintenance for the CARES-Live application. The maintenance is scheduled for Thursday, October 23, 2025, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. During this scheduled maintenance the CARES-Live team will focus on application maintenance changes that are not visible to CARES-Live users.

NOTE: Users will not be able to access the CARES-Live application during the scheduled outage.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with CARES-Live, please follow your county process for reporting issues. CARES-Live County Administrators may contact the CARES Service Desk through the CWDS ServiceNow Customer Support Management (CSM) Portal. Alternate methods are phoning 1-855-292-3444 or via email at Servicedesk@cwds.ca.gov during normal business hours. You may also email after hours and a Service Desk representative will contact you the next business day.

All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and SBC Administrators:

The California Department of Technology (CDT) has scheduled maintenance on Saturday, October 25, 2025, beginning at 6:00 AM and concluding at 10:00 AM. During the maintenance window, CDT will apply Standard Monthly OS Security Patches to SBCS Infrastructure Servers. There is no anticipated outage for this maintenance; however, CDT is asking that everyone log off from the Citrix SBC system, if not actively using it during the maintenance window.

Action Required

If users experience any issues with CWS/CMS, please follow your county process for reporting issues or you may contact the IBM Boulder Help Desk at 1-800-428-8268.