All active CARES users can always find all of that office's appointments in their Cases > My Appointments screen. Users may also request access to appointments outside of their own CARES office as well--learn more in Requests for Access from a Different Office. Below are tips for how to proceed after requesting access.
Standard Next Steps
Typically the appointed attorney will respond to your request within the next few days, and you will receive another email notification with their decision. The appointed attorney will receive automatic email reminders of any pending request every 3 days. They may approve or deny your request for access and may also grant extra access for you to view their entire office's activities on this appointment (instead of being able to see only your own office's activities on this appointment). They may enter a note for you about their decision. You and the appointed attorney will each receive additional email notifications after these events. You and the appointed attorney will each receive additional email notifications if access is later revoked.
If you need to cancel your request for any reason before the appointed attorney makes a decision, click the red trash can icon beside "Access Requested."
While You Have Access
Find all appointments to which your office has received access in the "Other Offices' Appointments" tab of Cases > My Appointments. You and your office can view (but not edit) this appointment's Profile tab with child parties, Involved Persons tab, and Associated Appointments tab. Your office can enter activities with optional notes and attachments; you and the appointed attorney's office can review these in the Activities tab as long as you continue to have access to the appointment.
Each office must generate independent invoices and each office's activities will appear only on their own invoice. There is no need to wait on the other office to enter their office's activities when it is time for you to invoice. In other words, if you are a Case Consultant with access to an attorney's appointment, you do not need to wait for the attorney to enter their activities before you submit your invoice; invoices are independent. More on invoicing in CARES
The appointed office must, however, monitor their additional funding carefully as usual because all activities, regardless of who entered them, draw down the appointment's allocation. OCR views all forms of litigation support as an important resource and investment, and OCR recognizes the value of these supports when processing requests for additional funding. More on monitoring funding
When your work on the appointment is done, see Finishing Work on Another Office's Appointment if you would like to remove it from your My Appointments list.
Not hearing from the appointed attorney?
The appointed attorney will receive automatic email reminders of your pending request every 3 days. Everyone is busy and emails do get lost, so if you have not had a CARES notification that your request for access was approved or denied and you need access urgently:
- Check the second tab, "Other Offices' Appointments," in your My Appointments list to make sure the appointment is not already there, which would mean it was approved; maybe you did not see the email notification. (Your email address is on the top of each of your invoices in CARES; if it is ever out of date, you can tell OCR to update it via the Change Request Form.) Need help with email notifications?
- It's often helpful to check in with the appointed attorney before re-sending a request (next bullet). They can go into their appointment in CARES with or without finding the email request, navigate to the "Requests for Access" tab of the appointment, and click your name there to make a decision. Remember that you can find GAL contact information by district at https://coloradochildrep.org/attorney-center/. Click on the list for the judicial district of the appointment and skim for the attorney's name.
- Though the appointed attorney will receive automatic email reminders of your pending request every 3 days, there may be times when it helps to re-send your email notification in real time. To do so, locate the case again via Cases > Search Cases. You will see "Access Requested" next to the appointment while waiting for a response, and you can cancel and re-do your request (note that the appointed attorney will receive a cancelation and a new request via email, so this is best to do while communicating with the attorney). Click the red trash can icon beside "Access Requested" to cancel your existing request; repeat your request to re-send the initial emails right now.