What Does Real Reform Look Like?

February 05, 2014

By Wally Gordon

“PROVISION OF SERVICES:

“A. PSD [Protective Services Division] shall make reasonable efforts to protect reported children from abuse and neglect, and when safely possible, to preserve the integrity of the family unit.

“B. Provision of services is based upon the results of the assessment of the safety of the child, an assessment of the risk to the child, the protective capacities of the parent or guardian, and the availability of services.”

—NMSA Section 8.8.2.12

Protective services should have a new mission that is “laser focused on the core mission of child safety.”

— Report to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer of the Independent Child Advocate Response Examination.

When a state’s children protective services fails to serve or protect children it is supposed to help, what is to be done? What is the root of the problem a state faces in trying to help children who are abused in their own families? How can a system that almost everybody calls dysfunctional be reformed?

Since the death of 9-year-old Omaree Varela in Albuquerque last month, legislators, officials of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department and advocates for children have been asking these questions. So far, they have no good answers.

To get some good answers, however, we need look no further than next door at Arizona, which has been suffering its own scandal over the state’s failure to protect children.

Unlike New Mexico, however, Arizona is actually doing something about its massive and metastasizing government illness. Arguably the most conservative state in the country, an extremely conservative governor and an overwhelmingly conservative legislature are finding fixes that continue to elude our own state.

Arizona’s newfound activism is in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that its problems are even deeper and more extensive than our own. But the question arises, if Arizona can fix a system of which the governor’s own team reported, “Ultimately, there is broad consensus that the child safety and welfare system is broken,” then why can’t New Mexico reform its own broken system?

Many of the problems of the Arizona and New Mexico protective services programs are identical: too few investigators, extremely high turnover sometimes approaching 100 percent a year, low morale, backbreaking caseloads, reports of child abuse falling between the cracks, failure to coordinate with other service and police agencies as well as with prosecutors and judges, incompetent managers and, worst of all, the tragic result: children killed or gravely injured by abusive relatives and caregivers.

In New Mexico, the reaction of Gov. Susana Martinez has been limited to asking the Children, Youth and Families Department to do an internal investigation, i.e. investigate itself, asking the Legislature for money to hire 10 new caseworkers and seeking unspecified raises for some CYFD employees.

In Arizona, the reaction of Governor Brewer stood in stark contrast. She ordered an independent investigation, and when the task force issued its 58-page report last month, she followed up. She abolished the entire department and replaced it with a new department that reports directly to her. She asked legislators to add $28 million initially to the protective services budget for personnel, with probably more to follow later. She is demanding more training for workers, better coordination with other police and service agencies, more use of private organizations and a revamped hotline.

Most drastic of all, Brewer’s task force urged that the mission of protective services be changed to become “laser focused on the core mission of child safety.”

In New Mexico, by contrast, the mission of CYFD is twofold, to protect children and preserve families. Moreover how CYFD treats an abused child is made to depend on a number of factors including availability of services.

This puts employees of CYFD in a bind, constantly working in a gray area or conflicting ethical, social, legal and practical goals. When does a worker decide that the abuse of a child is so severe or so incorrigible that the child must be removed? What level of abuse can be tolerated? For how long? How strong must the evidence of abuse be before the state acts to rescue the child?

In other words, New Mexico, far from being “laser focused on the core omission of child safety” constantly juggles competing interests. Sometimes the welfare of the child is indeed served. But then sometimes, as in the case of Omareee Varela, it is not.

This piece was written by:

Wally Gordon

Wally Gordon, who was for 12 years owner and editor of The Independent in Edgewood, began his career with three summer jobs at The New York Times while he was a student at Brown University. He spent a decade with the Baltimore Sun, including stints as national investigative reporter and Washington Bureau manager. He has freelanced or been a staff writer and editor for dozens of newspapers and magazines all over the United States.

Extensive travels have taken him to all 50 states and more than 60 foreign countries. He wrote a novel in Spain, edited a newspaper in American Samoa, served in the U.S. Army in Iran and taught for two years at a university in West Africa.

He is the author of A Reporter's World: Passions, Places and People. The new nonfiction book is a collection of essays, columns, and magazine and newspaper stories published during his journalistic career spanning more than half a century. Many of the pieces were first published in The Independent or in other New Mexico newspapers and magazines. The book includes profiles of the famous, the infamous and the anonymous, travel and adventure yarns, and essays on the major issues and emotions of our times.

A native of Atlanta, he has lived in New Mexico since 1978 and in the East Mountains since 1990. He has been married for 28 years to Thelma Bowles, a native New Mexican who is a photographer and French teacher. They have one son, Sergei.

New Mexico Mercury