The Office of the Child's Representative (OCR) billing and case management system, CARES (Court Appointed Reimbursement Electronic System), is an online application which allows contract attorneys, case consultants, and their staff to record all case-related activity.
As an attorney, when the court appoints you to an OCR case, enter that "appointment" into CARES and enter your activities on that appointment over the course of each month. On or before the 15th of the following month, use CARES to submit an invoice for those activities to OCR for review and payment (i.e. January's activities need to be submitted on an invoice by February 15th). This is the core functionality of CARES; there are many additional case and practice management features to explore over time.
This Quick Start Guide will walk you through how to:
Note that all blue text in these help articles, such as in the bullets above, indicates you can click on that text to move to that specific information or to find more help on that topic.
Log In to CARES
Important: CARES will only run properly in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. To avoid errors and data loss, do not access CARES through other web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge. Help remind yourself to do this by creating a bookmark for CARES only in Chrome, Firefox, and/or Safari.
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Download Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to use when accessing CARES. Never access CARES through other web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge. More on this
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Navigate to https://cares.coloradochildrep.org/#!/forgot. Carefully type your email address that is on file with OCR and click Submit. You will receive an email within a few minutes. Note your CARES username at the beginning of that email. Need help?
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Follow the hyperlink in the email from Step 2. Create any secure password you would like to use for the CARES application. Click the blue Reset Password button to save it.
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Click the blue Login button.
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Enter your username (it was at the beginning of the email from Step 2—not your email address).
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Enter the password you made up in Step 3.
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Click Login.
- Last, you may see a pop-up message asking you to secure your CARES account with "two-factor authentication," a very important security feature enabling CARES to occasionally text you information to access to your account (message and data rates may apply). Click "Quick Setup Now" to jump to User Settings > General Settings. First check the box beside Use Two Factor Authentication, then enter your mobile phone number as shown below. Click Save in the upper right of the screen. Follow the prompts to verify your device based on a text sent to your phone. More on this
- Welcome to CARES! Bookmark cares.coloradochildrep.org and visit that address any time from now on to log into CARES.