March 25, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Implementation Coordinators, and OCM Coordinators:
We are pleased to announce that the existing CWS-CARES Stakeholder Resources page has been updated to reflect publicly available resources regarding CWS-CARES.
The intent of these changes to the CWDS website is to build awareness on CWS-CARES project updates and promote user engagement. These changes will be implemented on April 8, 2025.
- The CWS-CARES Users page is currently located under the ‘Stakeholder Resources’ dropdown (note: URL for this page has not changed):
- The updated page will be organized by the type of role played by the site visitor and will include descriptions to help users more quickly navigate to what they need:
- Previously, this page was sorted by the type of system discussed. The page will now solely reflect CWS-CARES resources. All other resources will be moved to one of the following locations:
- “Follow our Progress” (part of the horizontal navigation bar at the top of the page)
- “RFA and CARES-Live Users” (part of the “Stakeholder Resources” drop down menu)
- “Technical Support” (part of the “Stakeholder Resources” drop down menu)
- In addition to these changes, the resources found on the former page titled “Project Reporting” will be moved to the following locations:
- Legislative Updates – Monthly: now visible under “Follow Our Progress”
- CWDS Planning Roadmap & Timeline: now visible under “Follow Our Progress”
- CWS-CARES Stakeholder Briefings: now on CARES User Resources | Child Welfare Digital Services
- And finally, any links that were previously found on this page will still be found at the bottom of the resources page. These links will also be available on either the Technical Support page or the CARES-Live and RFA Users pages once live, but they will be removed by May 31, 2025.
Action Required
Please reach out to Customer Relations if you have any questions.
March 24, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs and Training Contacts:
March 24, 2024 UPDATE: This is a reminder that the deadline to register for the R9.6 County Test Workshop (CTW) is tomorrow, Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
The Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) Office is requesting county staff to participate in the Release 9.6 County Test Workshop (CTW). Registered testers will participate in the testing of Release 9.6 Data Quality SCRs, which is been scheduled for delivery to the Counties on Saturday, August 16, 2025.
The CTW for Release 9.6 will be conducted in a remote setting via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) workstations.
The deadline to register is Tuesday, March 25, 2025
System Change Requests (SCRs) included in this release are:
- SCR 8982 - Add Missing Name for Placement Homes for CARES
- SCR 8983 - Add Missing Name for Non-Foster Care Facilities for CARES
- SCR 8999 - Update Client Dates out-of-range for CARES
- SCR 8985 - Make Name Mandatory for Non-Foster Care Facility
- SCR 8989 - Cleanup Outdated Home Studies
- SCR 8843 - Transfer Enrollment between DOE Schools
- SCR 8967 - Duplicate Hearing Notebook Warning
- SCR 8972 - ACL 22-95 ICWA Eligibility Data Entry Mandatory Fields (Part B)
- SCR 8943 - Expand Merge History Log
- SCR 9020 - R9.6 Training Tools Package
Counties are encouraged to register individuals with knowledge and experience working in the areas mentioned above. A mix of end users with casework or supervisory experience will also be beneficial. Participants will validate the changes in the release and will perform tests of problem fixes and enhancements. Participants will work with other County and State testers and vendor support staff.
Remote CTW sessions will take place in the morning from 9:00AM - 12:00PM and again in the afternoon from 1:00PM – 4:00PM on the following dates:
R9.6 Data Quality SCRs in the VB6 Environment
CWDS is seeking a total of fifteen (15) County staff members for each of the following twelve (12) sessions (2 sessions per day):
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Thursday, May 1, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Thursday, May 8, 2025 (AM or PM session)
R9.6 Data Quality SCRs in C# Environment
CWDS is seeking fifteen (15) County staff members for each of the C# fourteen (10) sessions (2 sessions per day).
Monday, June 23, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Tuesday, June 24, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Thursday, June 26, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Friday, June 27, 2025 (AM or PM session)
Participants are welcome to register for any of the sessions listed above in half or whole-day increments.
We encourage you to submit your request for a specific session as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. If a session’s count exceeds the maximum count, Customer Relations will work with that tester to be rescheduled for another session. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
A Release 9.6 CTW Online Registration Form (see link below) for each potential tester must be received as soon as possible but no later than 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, so the CWDS office can finalize the needed arrangements.
Link: Release 9.6 Data Quality SCRs (VB6 and C#) County Test Workshop (CTW) Registration Form
The CWDS Office will work with the registered testers on all the details of their CTW participation.
Special Note:
The County data will be pulled from the Production environment and copied to the CTW environment at the close of business on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. Therefore, changes to your Production environment after this date will not be in the CTW environment.
If you cannot access the Online Registration Form or have any questions regarding this recruitment, please contact CWDS Customer Relations.
Your continued support of CWDS is greatly appreciated.
Action Required
Submit a Release 9.6 County Test Workshop Online Registration Form no later than 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
March 21, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs and Technical Contacts:
Effective March 27, 2025, CARES-Live 2.8.33 Release is Scheduled to Move into Production
The CARES-Live team has scheduled release activity that will interrupt connectivity to the CARES-Live application. The release activity will begin at 6:00 PM on Thursday, March 27, 2025, and conclude at 9:00 PM. During this release, the CARES-Live team will focus on application changes, and users will not be able to access the CARES-Live application during this scheduled outage.
Users will not be able to access the CARES-Live application during this scheduled outage.
CARES-Live 2.8.33:
- This release addresses security findings and Java upgrades and other infrastructure updates and security patches not visible to CARES-Live users.
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.
March 21, 2025
Communications
Core Constituent Points of Contact:
Core Constituents,
You shared in quarterly Core Constituent surveys that new meeting and demonstration participants would benefit from onboarding resources to better understand CWS-CARES and how to engage effectively. In response, we are introducing the Core Constituent Orientation Guide, a one-page resource designed to support your onboarding and participation.
What’s in the Guide?
- Essential resources to get started
- Key activities for Core Constituents
- How to provide feedback
- Contact information for questions
You can access the guide in the attached document. It will also be included in all Core Constituent meeting invites moving forward.
We would like to hear from you! If you have suggestions to improve the guide, please send them to the Customer Relations Team.
Thank you for your continued participation and valuable contributions to CWS-CARES.
Action Requested
Send your suggestions to improve the Core Constituent Orientation Guide to the Customer Relations team.
March 20, 2025
Communications
Child Welfare Directors, Child Welfare Director-Alternates, Tribal Leadership, Probation Leadership, Core Constituents, CARES SPOCs, and Implementation Coordinators:
Child Welfare Leadership and CWS-CARES Meeting Participants,
As part of our ongoing effort to provide you greater insight into upcoming meetings for the CWS-CARES project, please see the updated CWS-CARES Meeting Calendar for March – May 2025. This calendar includes all meetings hosted by the CWS-CARES project, including Core Constituent demonstrations, implementation meetings, and key workgroups.
This calendar includes the following sessions:
- Prototype Demonstrations: Core Constituents review prototypes, or pre-build designs of CWS-CARES, to represent system functionality, to provide early feedback on user experience, navigation, and screen actions before the designs go into development.
- Build Review Demonstrations: Core Constituents see some of the feedback they provided in the Prototype Demonstrations reflected in CWS-CARES and provide further feedback on the developed product.
- Extended User Scenario Testing (EUST) 2: Participants will test end-to-end real-world scenarios in CWS-CARES.
- NEW Process Information Sessions: Designed for OCM Coordinators, these sessions outline new processes in CWS-CARES and their impact on staff workflows, helping counties, probation departments, CDSS, and Tribes with Title IV-E Agreements update policies and procedures.
Action Required
Please share this information with those at your organization you feel should be informed. Note: This calendar is point-in-time and subject to change. The CWS-CARES project plans to deliver a sustainable, more real-time calendar solution that will be accessible to all meeting participants and leadership in late March 2025.
If you have any questions, please contact CWS_CustRel@otsi.ca.gov.
March 19, 2025
Communications
All Pilot County RFA Implementation Coordinators and SPOCs:
The CWS-CARES team has scheduled maintenance activity for the CWS-CARES production environment for Thursday, March 27, 2025, beginning at 5:00 PM and concluding at 6:00 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 for end-users is needed 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.
March 17, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and SBC Administrators:
March 17, 2025 UPDATE: The California Department of Technology (CDT) has resolved the issue which prevented access to Server Based Computing (SBC). Counties are now reporting that they are successfully accessing SBC and are able to launch the CWS/CMS application.
Please contact the IBM Help Desk (800-428-8268) if you continue to experience any issue with accessing CWS/CMS or with SBC.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Multiple counties have reported issues with connecting to Citrix Server Based Computing (SBC). The CWDS Infrastructure Team is working with the California Department of Technology (CDT) to determine the cause and resolution for this issue.
There is currently no estimate of when the issue will be resolved. Updates will be shared as new information is received.
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.
March 14, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and CAD Contacts:
March 14, 2025 UPDATE: The Search indexing issue has been resolved.
________________________________________________________________________
The CWS/CMS CAD BusinessObjects (BO) server was unavailable last night, January 29, 2025. It was rebooted this morning at 10:10 AM, and the service was restored. The Search indexing caused logging issues for the DB2. Therefore, the Search indexing has been temporarily paused until the issue is resolved. Additionally, no scheduled reports were run this morning, but the scheduler is now running and will catch up soon. Therefore, you may experience some slowness. Please check in periodically for completed reports throughout the morning.
Action Required
Review scheduled BO reports today and tomorrow morning. Rerun the report jobs, as necessary.
Contact CWDS Customer Relations if you require more information regarding this issue.
March 14, 2025
Communications
All Pilot County RFA Implementation Coordinators and SPOCs:
The CWS-CARES team has scheduled maintenance activity for the CWS-CARES production environment for Tuesday, March 18, 2025, beginning at 5:00 PM and concluding at 9:00 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.
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.
March 12, 2025
Communications
All SPOCs, Technical Contacts, and SBC Administrators:
The California Department of Technology (CDT) has scheduled maintenance on Saturday, March 29, 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.
