CARES locks some case information after creation: the year, JD, court/county, some case types, and case sequence cannot be edited later. This is because a case is communal in CARES—more than one office may be "appointed" to it—so nobody can edit certain fundamental information after it is established. Read below for edits you may make, what to do about a wrong or incorrect case number, and what to do if you find the following errors:
Someone Else's Appointment
Occasionally, someone may have already created or used your exact case number in error. Because more than one office/attorney can always be “appointed” to each case regardless of what another attorney does, you can always proceed without delay on your own appointment, but please notify OCR if another attorney is currently appointed in error—OCR will assist them. If needed, see Trouble Appointing to a Case for help locating and/or correcting the case before you create your own appointment to it.
Case Type Errors
Errors in Case Type may be edited after saving only if the error does not change the 2-letter abbreviation (e.g. D&N EPP and Non-EPP are both "JV"). To see if you can make this change, find the case itself via Cases > Search Cases (important--it is not found in the appointment and not in My Appointments). Click on the blue case number, and you will see case information including the case type. If the correct case type is available in the drop-down, select it and then click Save on the case. If you do not see the correct case type (only those with the same two-letter abbreviation are available), see All Other Errors below.
Note, your Attorney Role is different than case type and is simple to change (e.g., GAL vs. CFY vs. GAL for youth victim/witness). Please see this article for help editing your attorney role instead.
Please notify OCR if your allocation needs an update based on the new case type OR if another attorney is also appointed when you change a case type—you can make the change and proceed, and OCR will assist the other attorney.
All Other Errors
For any error not explained above, unfortunately, you must end the error appointment and create a new appointment to the correct case. OCR cannot do this on your behalf. Thank you for correcting this error: your effort will prevent inaccurate billing and preserve essential accurate records of your OCR case work. Please make a habit of routinely double-checking case information upon appointment creation to save yourself this headache in the future.
To make the correction:
- Do not enter any additional activities on the error appointment. Make note of what has already been entered so you can be sure not to re-bill it in the new, correct appointment.
- Close the error appointment: Click on each child party name and enter a representation end date with reason "Opened in error." After the last child party, click "Confirm" on the notification that the appointment is now closed. (Your invoice will still capture closed appointments' activities.)
- Create a new appointment with the correct case number. Notify anyone who had access to your appointment (e.g., Case Consultants or Litigation Support) of the corrected case number so they may request access to the new appointment if needed. See Trouble Appointing to a Case if you need help finding or creating the correct case/appointment. See Associated Appointments to create a shortcut between the new and error appointment for quick reference.
For D&N cases, if your Initial Visit activity was entered on the error appointment, on the correct/new appointment enter a "Reason for late or missed 30-day in-placement visit" (found just above Placements) such as, "Visit on DATE billed in error on case number XXX" for all applicable child(ren) in the new case OR record a new non-billable initial visit in the new case. This will help clear an erroneous missed visit from your CARES Initial Visit Report. More on this - Enter activities on the correct appointment from now on. All activities you already entered on the closed error appointment before noticing the error will appear on your invoice as usual, but you should not enter any more activities on the error appointment. Please be sure not to bill any activities twice.