ALBUQUERQUE — Democratic lawmakers in the state House of Representatives feel they have been undermined in recent years in their efforts to reform the troubled New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department.

But during the 2027 legislative session, they say they plan to come back with a vengeance.

Amid growing frustrations among lawmakers that CYFD has continually failed to protect children in its care, House Democrats announced a slate of proposals aimed at reforming the agency, ranging from further empowering the department’s newest watchdog office to tightly regulating the use of group homes and other facilities to completely overhauling the agency’s governance.

“There are still too many children today — the most vulnerable amongst us — who are supposed to be cared for by the state of New Mexico, and yet the state has been failing them,” House Speaker Javier Martínez said during a news conference in downtown Albuquerque. “… House Democrats stand ready to, for once and for all, fix this agency.”

The caucus plans to propose sweeping reforms to CYFD, including:

u Granting the Office of the Child Advocate access to case records, interviews with CYFD staff, and the power to subpoena witnesses.

• Regulating the use of congregate care, such as group homes, by banning its use for children under 12 years old, requiring independent clinical certification to ensure it is necessary, and mandating a higher burden of proof every 30 days for the state to justify keeping children in facilities.
• Reintroducing a proposal to strip the governor of control over CYFD in favor of placing governance of the agency into the hands of an independent commission.
• Requiring CYFD investigators probing child abuse allegations to wear body-worn cameras, like police, and maintain digital notes, while also establishing a statewide child maltreatment registry.
• Revising state confidentiality laws to expand access of information to researchers and members of the news media.

CYFD spokesperson Jake Thompson did not directly respond to many of the proposals in an email, writing the agency will comment on legislative proposals when they are presented for consideration, debate and action. He said CYFD looks forward to working with the Legislature to help keep children safe and ensure they thrive.

Thompson did, however, strike back against House Democrats’ criticisms of CYFD, writing they “fail to take into account the measurable progress CYFD has made in the last 10 months.”

Those improvements include hiring and training hundreds of new employees, recruiting many new foster families, slashing frontline workers’ caseloads, improving the state’s efforts to place foster children in safe, appropriate settings, and making CYFD a better place to work, Thompson wrote.

“All these improvements are enabling the department to better serve New Mexico’s vulnerable children and families right now,” he wrote. “Secretary Sandoval has said she will keep her ‘foot on the gas’ in these significant areas the remainder of the year and is striving to embed the changes to ensure children and families receive durable, long lasting, and meaningful benefits in their lives.”

Background

CYFD has long struggled to protect children in its care in a number of ways.

Children in congregate care facilities — like group homes — have reportedly not had access to necessary services, like in-person therapy, and some have died or come to other serious harm while staying there. The New Mexico Department of Justice in a recent report found practices in child abuse and neglect investigations are “deeply flawed,” with workers skipping essential interviews and home visits. That agency also found that CYFD’s top leaders have lacked experience in child welfare, leading to an ineffective agency that abuses confidentiality laws to resist transparency.

But also at the center of many lawmakers’ recent frustrations are reports from the Justice Department that the newly founded Office of the Child Advocate — headed by Dawn Walters, a former CYFD official — has effectively been stonewalled in its efforts to act as a watchdog for the state’s child welfare system.

House Democrats have pointed to a decision by leaders of the state Senate to strike a deal with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and her administration to water down legislation creating the Office of the Child Advocate, including stripping the agency of the power to subpoena witnesses in cases in which a child in state custody has died or nearly died and make determinations about whether CYFD violated children’s rights or law in specific cases.

That deal, House Democrats say, has led to stonewalling by the state that has hindered Walters’ ability to do her job, prompting the proposals for her to have real-time access to unredacted case records, authority to interview CYFD staff and subpoena power.

“Our new legislation will make sure that the child advocate has all of the tools and information necessary to protect the best interests of kids in CYFD,” Rep. Michelle Paulene Abeyta, D-To’hajiilee, said during the news conference. “While my original bill outlined what records and documents the office should be able to access, CYFD has not adhered to these requirements, and instead created a long, burdensome process for the child advocate to get information required to do her job.”

Though CYFD has acknowledged there is a place for the Office of the Child Advocate, the agency and Lujan Grisham have stood by their opposition of expanded powers for the office, and have argued the governor correctly predicted the watchdog agency would “become politicized.”

Thompson on Tuesday said Walters was “not given ‘oversight’ over CYFD (despite her repeated assertions to the contrary),” adding her office was not created “to allow the Child Advocate to become some kind of Super Secretary with authority to override agency decisions.”

“It is not helpful, for example, when the Child Advocate disrupts emergency responses in real time to make demands of CYFD employees and direct how they do their job,” he wrote.

Political path ahead?

House Democrats say they have faced obstruction from both the state Senate and from the governor. They have cited House Bill 5, the 2025 measure creating the Office of the Child Advocate, which state senators ultimately watered down. Lujan Grisham also later used her power to veto specific provisions from the state budget to strip nearly $1.7 million from the office.

But House Democrats see a more optimistic future for the proposals presented on Tuesday.

Both candidates to succeed Lujan Grisham have indicated they are more on board with significant overhauls of CYFD, with Democratic nominee Deb Haaland expressing support for the idea of relinquishing control of the agency in favor of governance by an independent commission and empowering the Office of the Child Advocate.

In a recent interview, she added, “it’s pretty clear that CYFD … needs to be reformed. It needs to restart from the ground up. We need to make sure that we are essentially rebuilding that department.”

Republican gubernatorial nominee Gregg Hull has also said that if elected, he would “go in, identify the failures, and look at what we can do to make those corrections.”

“And then, ultimately, if we need to do a complete overhaul of the system and rebuild CYFD from the ground up — well, then we’ll take that approach,” he said.

As for clearing the hurdle on the other side of the state Roundhouse, Martínez said he has observed a shift in culture in the state Senate over the past year that he believes will help “get this over the finish line in the most meaningful and impactful way.”

Some powerful state senators have long criticized the chamber’s failure to stand behind efforts to get tough on CYFD. Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, last month decried the decision by Democratic and Republican leaders of the chamber to agree to water down HB 5.

But he added, “sometimes we have to maybe do things governors don’t want to do, and we won’t be working with this governor any longer.”

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