1. Certification, Approval, and Licensing Services (CALS) in New System
Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS) has long-term plans to deliver services to Counties for the purposes of Resource Family Approval processes and tracking, along with the state’s licensing processes in Child Welfare Services-New System.
The Request for Offer (or, RFO) for these services, the “Certification, Approval, and Licensing Services (CALS)” was released 9/16/16. And because it is an active procurement, the CWDS representatives best positioned to describe and answer questions for CALS unfortunately cannot be available for those discussions today, or until the conclusion of the procurement.
However, I am able to give a high level overview of what can be shared in this forum at this time.
The vision and scope

2. The Big Picture:
Child Welfare Services – New System (CWS-NS) will be an innovative, statewide 21st century information technology application that aids child welfare stakeholders in assuring the safety, permanency, and well-being of children at risk of abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
The Certification, Approval and Licensing Services (CALS) of CWS-NS will provide state and county licensing and approval staff and managers with a simple and efficient tool for the processes of facility licensing, certifying, and resource family home approval.

3. CALS Specifically:
The CALS “users” will primarily be the state and county employees who perform the activities related to facility licensing, certification, and resource family home approval, which includes the caseload-carrying field staff, supervisors and managers, legal advisors and support staff, among others essential to the performance of those duties. Additional CALS users will include other child welfare and probation workers, as well as the licensees, applicants, or approved families, and associated individuals who interact with CALS data and features through self-service portals.
The CALS “stakeholders” include the state and county users of CWS-NS, as well as the facility licensees, resource families, applicants for licensure or home approval, foster youth, advocacy organizations, researchers that use CWS-NS data, and all others with a stake or need for the information that will be captured and managed by CALS features.

4. The SIX Feature Sets of CALS: 1
The SIX Feature Sets of CALS: 1. CALS Intake – ability to receive, review, and appropriately route information provided or gained from internal and external sources as causes for action. 2. Home Approval and Licensure (Applications) – automation of the processes of reviewing applications for facility licensure, certification and/or resource family home approval for state and county licensing and approval staff. 3. Monitoring (Fieldwork) – automation of fieldwork and ongoing monitoring and evaluation activities of state and county licensing and approval personnel.

5. 4. Oversight Action – ability to record and ensure consistent and appropriate application of the policies and procedures for preventing, addressing, and remedying situations that have resulted or could result in harm or risk of harm to children. 5. Background Checks and Certification – ability to record, review, ascertain, take action and/or report on background check status and certifications. 6. Fiscal Management – accounts receivable functions for state users; also ability to evaluate and project key cost centers in the licensing and approval enterprise, including tools for estimating program resource needs, by jurisdiction and/or statewide. The CALS scope additionally includes common service requirements to support business and process needs common to more than one of the feature sets identified above.

6. These feature sets are expected to be interdependent, as this chart (which is in the RFO) represents. Each of the Feature Sets interacts with most of the others.

7. Where to find more details, for now:
The CALS Request for Offer (RFO), pages 3-8 and 77-84, is available to the public from along with instructions for viewing specific requirements and opportunities to give feedback.
More details about the CALS Vision, Background and current legacy systems are described in the RFO pages 3-8.
More details about what each feature set will cover can be found in pages
At this page, CWDS will also be providing a mechanism to share more information about specific requirements for CALS, as well as a way for users and stakeholders to provide feedback on the requirements.