KRQE Investigates: Can CYFD finally end kids sleeping in offices?

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – For years, kids in our state’s foster care system have been sleeping in office buildings. And for years, everyone has agreed that it is unacceptable. It causes more chaos in the child’s life and requires employees to work 24-hour shifts.

So, how do kids end up in an office? What needs to change to prevent this practice from happening anymore? The Children, Youth & Families Department’s Secretary sat down with KRQE Investigative Reporter Ann Pierret to share that the state may finally have a solution.   

Inside their Los Alamos home, Tiffany and James Warren bounced a newborn baby girl on the couch while tending to their energetic two-year-old son. They are two of more than two dozen children the Warrens have fostered throughout the last two years.

“I just feel like it’s what we’re supposed to do,” Tiffany shared. “And even whenever we talked about closing our house, we end up getting a call, and we’re like, okay, here we go again. Like, we can’t close our house. They need us.”

The couple ended up adopting the young boy after caring for him since he was in the NICU. He joined their two older biological kids, a son and daughter, who doctors initially told them they would never be able to have. “The more that we give, I feel like the more that we’re given,” Tiffany said. “So, I feel like it’s our calling.”

The couple began fulfilling that calling after moving to New Mexico a few years ago. “It was always on our brains. It was always in our hearts… and we decided we’re in a really good place,” Tiffany explained. That’s when the Warrens reached out to CYFD, beginning the process of becoming licensed foster parents.

“It was just interviews and checking our house, getting our house ready, baby-proofing the house, making sure everything is safe,” James shared. “Making sure that we’re safe and that we’re okay to take kids in. And then, eventually we finally got blessed. And the day of, or day after, we got our first.” Tiffany chimed in, “It was like the day of.”

Proof of the dire need for foster parents in the state —  both in the long and short term. “And there’s been some that have gone through things you can’t imagine. And so they’ve, you know, come with their own stories. And it’s been hard,” Tiffany shared. But, she added, they are just kids.

Kids who sometimes just need placement for a week or a weekend. Tiffany said they have received that call when a child has no other place to sleep but a CYFD office building. “We’ll figure something out because they’re people. I wouldn’t want to sleep on the floor in an office, especially after my whole world’s been turned upside down,” she said.

CYFD did want us to point out that kids aren’t sleeping on the floor. They have beds for them in the offices. Regardless, the state agency admits it’s still not okay. Even more so because, it turns out, the kids who end up living in offices are often dealing with behavioral or mental health issues on top of the trauma that led them into the foster care system.

“They just, they need more attention,” CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados explained. For some of these kids, she said, CYFD has requested placement in a TFC, or Therapeutic Foster Care, but “They’ll look at all the families they have to see if they have a match. Um, and, you know, I can say over the last year, we had sent out 60 packets, and I think 50 of them were rejected.” Rejected, Casados said, because a TFC only takes kids in need of intensive therapeutic or medical treatment. And while these kids need some extra care, it doesn’t rise to that level, leaving them with nowhere to stay except an office.

So far in 2025, CYFD offices in sixteen counties have housed kids. KRQE Investigates obtained photos of what some of those makeshift living spaces look like at county offices across the state.

Data provided by the state agency showed the number of office stays has doubled each year beginning in 2022. Many of those numbers reflect the same child staying more than once.

The data also revealed that kids are staying in offices longer, from an average 4-day stay in 2022 to an average 11-day stay in 2024.

“There may always be some sort of a need. But whatever we can do to minimize that, I think, is really needed,” Casados said.

She became the cabinet secretary in 2023, three and a half years after the state entered into the Kevin S. Settlement agreement. That agreement legally required an end to office stays. Now, in 2025, Casados told KRQE Investigates she believes CYFD has the solution.

“It’s something that, you know, we’ve been working on for a while. It’s not just all of a sudden we need to end this,” she explained.

Modeled after a similar program in Oklahoma, CYFD created Foster Care +. “The enhanced foster care will be like it’s a child who really doesn’t need those intensive therapeutic treatments, but needs more than just a regular foster care. So, you know, maybe more therapy, maybe more one-on-one time with the family, maybe not other kids in their environment, right? Maybe they have special needs at school that can’t be met,” Casados shared.

Right now, the state agency is only recruiting veteran foster parents to participate, asking them to take in just one kid at a time. The secretary explained, “So it’s not like we’re increasing the number of homes, but we’re taking some of those families who have had more experience in dealing with kids with higher levels of need, and then really kind of doing wraparound services around them.”

Wraparound services include more check-ins from CYFD staff, additional months-long training on both de-escalation and how to handle specific behaviors, plus: “The actual support afterwards, right?” Casados said. “Who do I call at 9:30 on a Friday night when my child is really acting out and I have no idea what to do?”

The state reported five families are currently participating, which has resulted in two kids placed. The secretary shared that CYFD is focused on getting Bernalillo County and Chaves County foster families involved in the program right now because that’s where the highest number of kids in state custody reside. If kids outside of these counties need a Foster Care + home, Casados said they plan to relocate them. “I think at this point right now, yes, that would be the thought is to get them into a community where they can get the services that they need,” she added.

Casados hopes the impact will be felt by office staff, too. Email records obtained by KRQE Investigates reveal repeated requests for overtime, a 24-hour shift, to keep an eye on kids living in offices. When no one steps up, overtime becomes mandatory.  

When asked how much longer that can continue, Casados replied, “Well, not much. I mean, it’s incredibly hard… If they’re not doing mandatory overtime, then they’re probably on call in case there’s a situation that they have to go out to address, you know, in a community. And so it puts a huge burden on those workers. Our turnover rate is high. Our recruitment is difficult. And the burnout for them is unbelievable.”

That’s a problem, Casados admits, among foster families, too. “I mean they really are appreciated. I just don’t think that they’re feeling it. And we do have a high turnover of foster families as well. So as hard as they’re working to recruit new families, and then we’re losing families, that’s been a really difficult thing,” she said.

The Warrens said their home will remain open for as long as they feel called to help. “You do make a difference, even if in that short amount of time that you have them,” Tiffany said. “It’s not always easy, but even at the end, like doing all that, doing all that, and dealing with all this stuff that we’ve had to deal with, we would do it again and we would choose all these kids again because they all need love and we have so much to give. Why not?”   

If you’re interested in becoming a foster parent, CYFD said the state agency is always looking for more people to open their homes. With veteran foster families joining the new Foster Care + program and only taking in one child, CYFD knows fewer homes will be available to kids in the state’s care.

• Resource: Click here for details on how to become a foster parent

In 2024, CYFD opened two multi-service homes in Bernalillo County as part of its ongoing effort to end the practice of kids sleeping in offices. Casados called the homes a “bridge” until more families sign up for Foster Care +. However, one of the facilities is now the center of a criminal investigation.

New Mexico’s Attorney General opened the investigation after 16-year-old Jaydun Garcia ended his life at one of the homes earlier this year. The secretary did not respond directly to the investigation but has said she hopes to grow Foster Care + to the point that these group homes are no longer needed.

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