Amid ongoing failures by the state to protect vulnerable children, find adequate foster homes and make other improvements in New Mexico’s troubled child welfare system, lawmakers for years have called for the governor to be stripped of control of the Children, Youth and Families Department.
But is that a good idea?
New Mexico lawmakers intent on tearing the head off CYFD and replacing it with an independent panel of leaders argue the move would bring long-term strategy and continuity of leadership to an agency that has been criticized for a “revolving door” at its helm.
“It’s time for us to do something that will stabilize that department. It’s time for us to move in a direction where we’ve got child welfare experts at the helm,” Rep. Eleanor Chávez, D-Albuquerque, said in an interview.
But Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and her administration, some advocates and the independent monitors of the state’s progress on a landmark child welfare settlement argue the agency should stay where it is.
“Restructuring the agency would disrupt the significant progress made under current CYFD leadership and is not supported by national subject matter experts. It would also diffuse accountability and slow response times,” gubernatorial spokesperson Leah March wrote in an email. “The governor remains focused on improving CYFD for New Mexico children and youth under the agency’s care.”
CYFD spokesperson Jessica Preston echoed March’s remarks, writing in an email that CYFD “greatly benefits from the direct relationships with our sister agencies.”
Preston said placing CYFD under an independent commission would slow crucial decision-making and weaken accountability by introducing superfluous layers of government. She called the idea an “ill-thought-out plan” that would do little to address the root causes of child abuse and neglect.
“CYFD and the families we serve cannot afford this kind of disruption of service,” Preston wrote. “Additionally, there is no evidence that a structure of this sort would provide any benefit at all.”
‘Knee-jerk response’
Proposals for CYFD to be removed from the Governor’s Cabinet have been made in the Legislature for at least the past three years.
The clamoring among lawmakers to make the change has gotten louder in recent weeks, especially since the state Department of Justice released a scathing report earlier this month identifying a number of concerning issues with CYFD and arguing the agency had made a “systematic moral failing” in its duty to protect children.
The idea seems to be popular among voters.
Forty-nine percent of voters who responded to a poll conducted by Emerson College Polling and KRQE News 13 earlier this month said they did not approve of the job Lujan Grisham has done running CYFD. In a separate question, a 46% plurality said they would vote “yes” if presented with a constitutional amendment revoking the governor’s power to appoint the leader of the agency.
March did not directly address a question requesting Lujan Grisham’s response to the poll.
Despite support from the public and increasing political will to remove CYFD from the governor’s control, arguments for the governor to retain control of the agency have come from unlikely sources.
Longtime child advocate Maralyn Beck, who frequently criticizes the state’s handling of its foster care system, argued in an opinion piece published by The New Mexican recently that while removing political influence from CYFD sounds good in theory, “this shortsighted, knee-jerk response could prove problematic.”
Beck also argued moving CYFD out of the Governor’s Cabinet would inhibit collaboration between departments. The problems the agency faces do not lie with the leadership structure at its head, she argued.
“We don’t need to separate CYFD from the governor’s control. What we need is [a] governor who takes more control by taking to heart the chain reaction and interconnectedness of all child-serving agencies,” she wrote.
In a letter penned last year, Judith Meltzer and Kevin Ryan — appointed to be independent monitors of the state’s progress in a 2020 settlement agreement known as the Kevin S. settlement — also opposed lawmakers’ bid at the time to create an independent commission for CYFD.
They argued that in other states that have seen significant reforms of their child welfare agencies, their governors played a major role.
“Commission-led governance is very likely, in our view, to exacerbate many of the problems we have documented in New Mexico,” they wrote.
Chávez pushed back against the idea that her proposal would stymie collaboration.
“There’s nothing that says that a commission cannot collaborate with all of the different entities that it needs to collaborate with in terms of providing services to these kids,” she said.
Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, has pitched a separate idea: Convert CYFD into an agency with a board of regents composed of a current or retired Children’s Court judge, a behavioral health specialist, a foster parent and others. That panel would then hire an executive director to lead CYFD. It would still be separate from the Governor’s Cabinet.
Under that structure, Padilla argued, the mechanics of how CYFD is managed would not change, therefore allowing for collaboration with other departments. He pointed to other state-funded agencies that have succeeded despite not being part of the Governor’s Cabinet, such the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center.
At the end of the day, the status quo is “not working for us,” said Padilla, who grew up in foster care.
“We have to try something new and something different,” he said.
Looking ahead
Although the debate over who should control CYFD has raged during much of Lujan Grisham’s tenure, it likely will not be settled before New Mexico’s next governor steps up.
Candidates for that position have given different answers on where they fall.
Democratic candidate Deb Haaland, a former member of Congress and Interior secretary under the Biden administration, said she supported the idea of creating a CYFD commission, echoing the argument that it would bring long-term strategy to the agency.
“So many things change when administrations change,” she said in an interview this month. “Making sure that children have the consistency of care that they need, I think, will make a world of difference.”
Second Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman, also a Democratic candidate, was less enthusiastic about the idea, although he said he would consider it. He argued the better idea was to narrow the department’s responsibilities by creating a separate state agency dedicated to juvenile justice, thus allowing CYFD to focus primarily on child welfare issues.
Two of the three Republican candidates did not respond to requests for comment on the issue made earlier this month. The third, Duke Rodriguez, said he “absolutely” supported the idea of a CYFD commission.
“I think the more transparency we can add, the better off we all are,” he said.
First of all we wouldn’t have such a problem if parents would be parents and grow up. So many on drugs and whatever else they are doing instead of being a parent and taking care of their children. Yet the world wants to critique and make fun of Christian parents who work, pay their bills, taxes and love and care for their children. It’s time to wake up and realize experts don’t know everything. Children want someone to love and care for them. Your degrees mean nothing. A generation produces what they learn, see and are taught. May God have mercy on our soul.