Instead of the group select you can use a suppress statment to hide all the records that do not meet your criteria. This menas all of your display needs to be in the footers.

Create a Running Total (you can also use shared variable fomrula if you prefer)

Name=HideFlag (or whatever)

Field to Summarize=clientid

type= count

evaluate=use a formula

table.statusdate=max(table.statusdate,table.department) and table.status in ["A","W"]

Reset= on a group (group 2 department)

palce in group 2 footer.

You can now use this value to suppress the footers where #HideFlag=0