The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department is unlikely to meet several targets laid out by an arbitrator in a landmark child welfare lawsuit, according to numbers presented during a Monday hearing in the case.
The agency expects to have 132 net new caseworkers by the end of the year, an amount chief operations officer Brenda Donald acknowledged is “still not nearly enough to meet our caseload requirements.”
The agency also has signed on just 93 new nonrelative foster homes, far below its mandated target of 265 for this year.
“We’re concerned that even all these months after the arbitration, there doesn’t seem to be a clear, comprehensive plan,” said Tara Ford, an attorney for plaintiffs in the case known as Kevin S., during the virtual hearing.
Still, CYFD has made some positive steps in recent months, Donald said, including closing outstanding cases at a higher rate as well as seeing small gains in enrolling children in its Foster Care+ program, which is designed to serve children with high needs.
“We have made some progress that’s tangible,” she said.
The updated numbers come after the arbitrator in the case, Charles Peifer, in August found the state was not making progress on several outcomes laid out in the Kevin S. case and underscored by him earlier this year.
Among the most significant were lackluster recruiting of homes to take in foster children and severe caseloads for frontline workers, which has led to significant turnover in New Mexico’s child welfare workforce. Peifer laid out several goals for the state to reach, including recruiting 265 new nonrelative foster homes.
The Kevin S. lawsuit, originally brought in 2018 by more than a dozen foster care children, was settled two years later, with the state being required to make an array of reforms to New Mexico’s foster care system. However, amid plaintiffs’ arguments the state has failed to make good on those commitments and a failed corrective action plan, the case has been in arbitration proceedings for over a year.
It was unclear Monday what will happen if the state fails to meet Peifer’s targets; he said he will work out in the coming days whether to have a hearing in January designed to help determine if he should issue additional remedial orders in the case.
Baby steps
CYFD has long struggled with turnover, often among its least-tenured workers.
According to numbers released by field experts in the Kevin S. case last month, 45% of the total 84 resignations the agency had last year were among workers who had been with the agency for less than a year.
Donald said Monday that caseworkers departing the agency often cited stresses related to their jobs, particularly with the workloads they experienced. She added the agency is working to address these problems in its retention plan.
“Primarily it’s about workload,” she said. “It’s about not feeling, overall, supported in terms of their onboarding and coming into a new job and really making sure that they understand the roles and responsibilities, the culture of the department.”
The agency has made steps forward in improving workers’ caseloads, resolving 1,300 cases in the past couple of months — many of which, Donald said, took simple administrative tasks to take care of.
She said the initiative responsible for clearing those cases is expected to continue until the end of year, an extension believed to “catch us up with all of the outstanding cases that need to be closed.”
CYFD also hopes to complete home studies of close to 50 families applying to take in nonrelative foster children by the end of the year, Donald said. The agency has a total of 83 families currently in the pipeline.
It’s not clear if the agency will match the total number of new nonrelative foster families it signed on last year, either — in 2024, CYFD recruited 134 such homes.
Still, the agency has added two more homes to its Foster Care+ program since its previously-reported total of 26. That program, launched early this year, is designed to equip families with the resources and services they need to serve children with greater needs, including those with significant behavioral health struggles who are difficult to place in other homes.
CYFD has two more homes close to entering Foster Care+, Donald said. So far, she added, the program has helped to stabilize children who enter it.
“The Foster Care+ homes that have come online … have proven to have some stability, at least over the last couple of months,” she said. “… The goal is to stabilize them so we have fewer disruptions, fewer kids who then end up becoming office stays or needing a higher level of care.”