New Mexico was far from meeting the remedial goals laid out last year in the landmark child welfare lawsuit known as “Kevin S.” and has continued to expose dozens of children in state custody to serious harm, a recent report says.
The state Children, Youth and Families Department made meager gains in improving caseloads for its beleaguered workforce and recruiting foster homes, according to the report, written by field experts tasked with tracking the state’s progress. Meanwhile, nine children died in state care, while others faced hundreds of incidents involving allegations of abuse, neglect or other trauma, the report states.
Still, the state made some improvements, such as in completing on time-mandated wellness checks of children entering custody.
Plaintiffs in the case acknowledged the state had made some gains but emphasized serious harm was still prevalent among children in state custody.
“The State’s limited areas of improvement stand in stark contrast to the harm endured by children whose lives are in the balance,” attorney Tara Ford wrote in an email.
The report represented an effort to track the state’s progress in meeting several goals handed down by arbitrator Charles Peifer across two remedial orders last year. Those orders were designed to help bring the state into compliance with commitments it made in the Kevin S. settlement, but which Peifer found New Mexico had struggled on.
CYFD spokesperson Jake Thompson wrote in an email the agency was continually evaluating its policies and other practices to more efficiently serve children and families.
“CYFD will continue its dedicated effort to implement the systemic improvements detailed in the Settlement Agreement and remedial orders,” he wrote.
Parties in the child welfare case are set to meet again March 2, according to the report.
Ongoing trauma
Children are still frequently being exposed to serious harms while in CYFD’s care, the experts’ findings indicate.
Nine children died and 10 nearly died while in state custody last year, the report states. Meanwhile, 65 children from Aug. 18 to the end of the year were involved in 201 “critical incidents,” which include instances in which 911 was dialed or other harm was alleged.
Of those, 124 occurred in offices, with 17 involving serious injuries, suicide attempts or allegations of abuse, neglect or other harm.
“CYFD offices are clearly not safe places for children,” Ford wrote.
The experts reported CYFD filled at least 11 behavioral health specialist positions designed to provide care and supervision to children in office stays in Bernalillo and Doña Ana counties as of Dec. 31.
However, critical incident reports included allegations staff antagonized children and escalated situations rather than providing crisis management, or indicated staff were afraid of kids staying in offices, exacerbating the “harmful narrative surrounding the needs of children in foster care,” the experts wrote.
“The predominant behavioral management tool staff use to manage children placed in CYFD offices remains to contact law enforcement,” they added. “While there are times when contacting law enforcement could be appropriate, this routine practice places children in state custody at risk for the criminalization of adolescent behaviors and the result of system involvement.”
Thompson noted staff face challenging situations and said specialists receive significant training, including in nonviolent crisis prevention intervention and trauma-responsive care. All staff can also access coaching to help them navigate complicated and stressful situations.
“We are taking steps to ensure our staff is fully aware of and able to take advantage of these support services, and to ensure offices are secure,” he wrote.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last month banned CYFD from allowing children to stay in offices, setting a March 1 deadline for the agency to end the practice. CYFD said at the time 15 children were in offices, adding it had already stopped accepting new children in those settings.
The experts noted CYFD told them most of the children who had been placed in offices within the preceding month had been moved to different settings, including foster and group homes and a new transitional facility in Las Cruces staffed by department behavioral health specialists.
CYFD reportedly acknowledged the Las Cruces facility is not designed for children to stay long term. Still, leadership described it as a “better placement option for youth than government offices, and represented that its opening allows for the immediate end of office placements in the southern part of the State,” the experts wrote.
Weak gains
Peifer laid out two remedial orders last year designed to bring the state into compliance with its goals in the Kevin S. case amid lackluster progress.
He required the state to recruit 265 new nonrelative foster homes, make 244 new placements in treatment foster care and take steps toward establishing a more robust system for after-hours care and maltreatment investigations.
CYFD recruited just 122 nonrelative foster homes last year and it approved and licensed 121 treatment foster care placements, meeting those goals by a little less than half.
As of Dec. 15, just 20% of primary caseworkers had caseloads compliant with standards of their field, and by Dec. 31, the agency had filled 22 emergency response positions out of its capacity of 35. Staff also reported that although they received new employee training promptly after being hired, the training did not properly prepare them for work, and they requested more role-specific preparation.
Ford highlighted the lack of progress, arguing the state’s failure to manage workers’ caseloads had led to real harm against children.
“The new leadership at CYFD must increase [its] efforts and align the resources necessary to address critical ongoing needs for workforce development and foster home recruitment and retention,” she wrote. “It remains perilous for children in foster care, when only 20 percent of the workers assigned to their care have compliant caseload standards.”
Thompson said CYFD was aware of the concerns raised by new staff and was still working to refine the training and starting to redesign its onboarding program. CYFD has 27 emergency response positions filled and is “actively recruiting and expediting the hiring process to fill the remaining eight … as soon as possible,” he wrote.
Thompson also said CYFD for the first time was using a data-informed tool to determine the state’s needs for foster homes and other placements in order to adequately meet children’s needs and was in talks with the experts over what its recruitment targets this year should be.
Some progress
The state did improve in an important area: ensuring children entering state custody receive timely wellness checks to verify their health and other indicators.
During the first half of 2025, New Mexico struggled to complete such visits by its requirement of 30 days from when a child enters state custody. From January to June, the state completed only 23% of its required well-child visits on time.
From July to November, that number shot up to 77%.
The state works to perform timely wellness checks on all children entering state custody but sometimes faces obstacles it cannot control, Thompson noted. For example, children may face long hospitalizations delaying scheduling of a check, or a family may have an emergency that prevents them from keeping appointments.
Sometimes, families just don’t show up, he added.
“When obstacles occur, our Protective Services Division responds very quickly, and even with such unanticipated events, most visits are completed within 30 days,” Thompson said.