Foster Care

Those who knew the boy described him as a caring young man who was supportive of the other foster youth living in CYFD facilities. His death comes after consecutive years of the state’s failure to provide stable foster homes and mental health care for teenagers in its custody.

The Children, Youth, and Families Department’s Fostering Connections program was created several years ago to extend foster care services to youth aging out of the system. Now the legislature is looking to expand services and eligibility.

New Mexico has ranked consistently near the bottom when it comes to child well-being. The Children, Youth and Families Department, which is supposed to protect the most vulnerable children, has also battled scandals, secrecy, and staffing instability for decades. In the first of a series, KUNM looks deeper into the legacy of these longstanding challenges and how they affect families in the foster care system.

New Mexico’s child welfare agency is supposed to safeguard children in its custody and report them immediately if they vanish. In this case, it didn’t.

The Children, Youth, and Families Department has faced scrutiny in the past for placing foster youth in their office to stay for periods of time. Interim Secretary Teresa Casados committed to ending these stays by working on restructuring the department. But she does not say there is a definite date for the stays to end.

The Children, Youth, and Families Department has made a recent decision that will allow children in state custody to keep federal benefits owed to them, instead of using those payments to support foster care.

Just on the first of July, a new state office officially opened its doors. The Office of Family Representation and Advocacy aims to help children and families in the foster care system or at risk of entering care.

A new agreement has been reached, designed to improve the performance of the Children, Youth and Families Department and the Human Services Department, especially with respect to foster care.

KUNM recently explored the many problems with the state’s foster care system on several Let’s Talk New Mexico shows. But the state is also investing tens of millions of dollars into early childhood care and education and we wanted to see how that might help stabilize families before foster care enters the picture.

The Children, Youth and Families Department has received consistent backlash concerning issues of transparency. The Department hosted a meeting Tuesday to announce the launch of a new dashboard that officials say promotes more transparency. The site has several data points to show progress with things like staffing and efforts to recruit foster parents.