New Mexico’s child welfare department may not be making good use of the money lawmakers have been allocating in recent years to fund pilot programs to help fix the agency’s problems, according to a presentation Wednesday.
In 2024, the state Children, Youth and Families Department was allocated roughly $18.7 million over the following three years through the Government Results and Opportunity Program, which finances temporary projects in an effort to determine their efficiency before lawmakers fund them permanently.
However, CYFD has failed to spend and sent back to the Legislature more than $5.2 million across the four programs so far, according to Wednesday’s presentation to the Legislative Finance Committee. Legislative analysts also found some of the programs — which include preventative services and pay incentives for qualified foster care caseworkers — have failed to demonstrate meaningful impact.
Lawmakers expressed concerns over the department’s failure to use funding it received and noted that little of the data that was presented to them showed how the Legislature’s investments were improving outcomes for children.
“There is no disagreement about more money for a better job,” said Rep. Nathan Small, a Las Cruces Democrat and chair of the committee. “That outcome-level data, to be candid from my end, it’s not fully there yet.”
Though Small acknowledged CYFD had reported some progress, he added the overall lack of insightful data was “because in the first year of implementation, very little of the money was spent.”
Lawmakers from both parties criticized the department.
“These are arbitrary figures that don’t tell us an outcome,” said Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences. “They don’t compare an input to an outcome.”
Acting CYFD Cabinet Secretary Valerie Sandoval acknowledged the agency’s struggles to spend the money, especially in the first year CYFD received it. However, she argued the agency has “successes to show for it” and urged lawmakers to continue investing in the programs.
“While we’re very grateful for GRO funding that we have received, we urge the committee and the Legislature to take these pilot projects and build them into CYFD’s base budget, which would provide stability, consistency and sustainability for this department,” she said.
Social worker struggles
CYFD has struggled to employ child protective services workers who have degrees in social work, despite $1.7 million in pilot program funding, legislative analysts reported in a brief that accompanied the department’s presentation.
At the end of 2025, just 264 employees across the agency had social work degrees, and only about half were licensed social workers. In the agency’s frontline Protective Services Division, only 128 workers had social work degrees, half of which were master’s degrees, and only 26 were licensed, according to the brief.
The total number of licensed social workers across the department increased only by a dozen in 2025, from 122 to 134, the brief stated.
Legislative analysts noted an effort in the first year of the pilot program to incentivize employees with master’s degrees in social work to stay at the agency by implementing a temporary 10% raise only benefited 48 workers, and did not lead to any increased retention.
Sandoval said CYFD restarted the effort to attract people with social work degrees and incentivize current employees to earn them in January. The current initiative has impacted over 50 employees with licenses at the master’s, bachelor’s and provisional levels, she said.
She acknowledged CYFD would like to have as many employees with social work licenses as possible.
“When we do get a list from [the State Personnel Office] and we see that someone has a social work degree or licensure, we absolutely make sure that we have them in an interview, and prioritize those that do have that,” Sandoval said. “I think at the end of the day, we would like every single caseworker to have a social work degree or licensure.”
Rep. Meredith Dixon, D-Albuquerque, highlighted the fact that just 5% of Protective Services Division workers are licensed and have master’s degrees while noting funding for personnel has grown by almost 50% since fiscal year 2019 in that division.
“We’ve got quite a ways to go, it sounds like,” she said.
Money unspent
Investments to curb the state’s above-average rate of repeat child maltreatment have also had muted effects, analysts indicated.
As of May, 16% of children in New Mexico who had experienced abuse and neglect before were mistreated again. The national benchmark is 9%.
In the 2025 fiscal year, CYFD spent just 10% of funding lawmakers set aside to expand prevention and intervention programs, analysts wrote. Then, last year, the agency finally received approval for a plan to draw down funds through the federal Family First Prevention Services Act.
Among them is SafeCare, which legislative analysts described as a home visiting program for children 5 and younger who are at risk of maltreatment. However, as of the end of fiscal year 2026, CYFD had enrolled 25 families in the program — with just one completing it. Seventy-eight declined the program, Sandoval said.
She acknowledged the state’s failure to spend funding in fiscal year 2025 and said the low uptake among families in SafeCare is partly due to the fact that the program — which is broken up into 18 one-hour sessions — takes too long to complete. But she touted CYFD’s use of funding to open six family resource centers, which are facilities that help connect families to services they may need.
In 2025, these facilities served 1,400 families, Sandoval said.
“We do believe that expanding prevention and intervention programs, such as SafeCare and family resource center programming, helps families strengthen protective factors, reduce stress and reduce the likelihood of future CYFD involvement,” she said.
