NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – It’s been a year since New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham created a council of child welfare professionals meant to share insight and recommend policy changes to improve the many problems within the state’s Children, Youth & Families Department. KRQE has detailed a long list of systemic issues that have led to things like kids sleeping in state office buildings and even children dying after CYFD intervention.
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This CYFD Policy Advisory Council was the Governor’s solution after she shot down a bill that would have created independent oversight of the agency, which state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle supported in 2023’s legislative session. One year after its creation, KRQE Investigates is asking what this Council has done.
Councilmember Barbara Yehl sat down with KRQE to help answer that question. She explained, “I had high hopes for this.” Yehl had hopes her perspective and input mattered and that she could impact real systemic change within CYFD. “I feel like every email I send, um, is just sent to junk,” she added.
Yehl said serving on the Department’s Policy Advisory Council feels meaningless. “This Policy Council that I’m on is full of wonderful people with wonderful ideas, and we have all shared our ideas so many times,” she explained. “And the people who are supposed to be listening and making the decisions have not done a single thing that we have suggested.”
Yehl runs the nonprofit Lighthouse Foster and Adoption Support in Roswell. As a former foster mom, who frequently works with her local CYFD office, she said she was excited to get the chance to make a difference when the Governor appointed her to the Council a year ago. However, she shared through tears, “They have asked for our advice. It’s a policy advisory council and we have given them advice, solutions, and they have not done them, and it is on them that this stuff is happening.”
That “stuff” Yehl explained is foster kids still sleeping in state office buildings, and overwhelmed staff forced to call the police when the behavior of those kids gets out of hand. These are two issues Roswell’s CYFD Office has dealt with for several months. “We have offered some suggestions, like I said in the past, about helping retain and recruit more foster families,” Yehl explained. “Same as with staff, like we’ve offered solutions to help improve their staff retention.” KRQE Investigative Reporter Ann Pierret asked, “Is any of that being listened to?” Yehl responded, “It does not feel like it.”
At the Council’s first meeting, the only one open to the public, then-acting CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados made it clear she wouldn’t tell the members what to do. But she said she hoped the Council would focus on those two things – retaining and recruiting both CYFD staff and foster families. “They are really designated to help drive the policy that we create within the organization, to make sure that it works for people,” she explained. “So, they’ll be working very closely with the department, um, in helping us to drive the changes that we’re making.”
But are they doing that? We asked the Secretary in a one-on-one interview. “I think, you know, a lot of the work that we’ve been done has been on the transformation,” she explained.
And that’s Yehl’s frustration. She explained while they have monthly meetings, those consist of the Secretary reporting what she and the Department’s transformation team have done or already plan to do, then asking members what they think. “It’s a conversation that I’m having also, now that I’m more as a permanent, um, Secretary here in the Department is really how do we increase the communication with the Advisory Council so that it’s more of information coming from them on solutions as opposed to me just reporting out to them on, you know, what we’re doing on the transformation,” Casados said.
When asked what the point of the Policy Advisory Council is, Yehl responded, “That’s a good question.”
It’s a question KRQE Investigates wanted to ask the person who created the Council, Gov. Lujan Grisham. After a month and a half of sending more than 15 emails and phone calls requesting an interview, the Governor’s staff told us she wasn’t available. But, she did multiple interviews with other media outlets during that time. In the end, the Governor’s Office sent a statement, not from the governor, but from one of her staffers. So, we let the Governor’s Office know KRQE Investigates would show up at the next press conference to get answers. Since the governor created this council with a veto and executive order, we felt we had an obligation to have viewers hear directly from her.
When KRQE Investigates’ Ann Pierret approached the governor after a press conference to explain she had been trying to interview her for a month and a half, the governor responded, “I’m busy!”
Pierret asked if the governor would answer a few questions right then and she agreed, saying, “I can answer a question. You can do it right now. Thirty seconds. I’ve got another interview.”
Knowing the Council has not produced any reports with policy change suggestions since its creation, Pierret asked the governor what it has achieved. “The fact that we’re making sure that contracting with foster parents, doing the training, engaging in any number of other activities, including making sure that we’re catching up on protective services, doing the forensic work to understand what those problems are. All of that got supported by the Advisory Council,” she said.
The governor then spent the next minute and a half listing goals for CYFD, so Pierret interjected:
Pierret: But that’s specific to the Council?
Governor: They’ve hired more — Yes. The Council’s job isn’t to — What do you think the Advisory Council would do?
Pierret: Well, I’ve heard from Council members that they don’t feel that they’re being listened to, that their, um, emails are going to junk, that nothing that they are suggesting regarding kids sleeping in offices, things like that. None of that …
Governor: We’re building a whole …
Pierret: …none of that’s being changed.
Governor: I disagree.
Pierret: Okay.
The governor’s press secretary told Pierret the interview was over, but the governor continued, “And if we’ve got an individual that feels that way, we’ll do more for that individual. But one individual doesn’t get to micromanage a department by virtue of being an Advisory Council member. And not every piece of advice is taken by every legislator, every everyone.”
When questioned by lawmakers in January, Secretary Casados explained the Council had not produced a report yet because her focus was on reorganizing CYFD and she also needed to fill vacant positions on the council. Retired Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, Barbara Vigil, who chaired the council, left in October 2023. We’re told another member left shortly after the first meeting. And a seventh member was never appointed. So, the Council has never been fully staffed. A spokesperson for CYFD told KRQE Investigates, “CYFD is currently working with the Governor’s Office on vetting individuals to fill the three vacant positions.”
Regarding the report with policy recommendations, the Secretary told lawmakers to expect a report within the next few months. But CYFD issued this statement to KRQE Investigates when we asked for a narrower time frame: “The advisory council partners with the Department providing support to revise and update its policies and procedures. These finalized policies will be available on our website and will be shared with legislators in a spirit of cooperation because there is no requirement for this advisory council to produce a report of any kind.”
