New Mexico Mercury

George Ortega (pseudonym)—the source at the state Children, Youth and Families Department for my article, “Why did Omaree Varela die?"—responded to the article with following letter:

Wally, Thank you for writing “Why did Omaree Varela die?” Hopefully it will spur some action. I want to clarify a few points you made.

You wrote: "Although the governor insisted nobody could have prevented the boy’s death, the former CYFD worker disagrees. CYFD had options, he says, and he doesn’t understand why they were not utilized.  He said there needs to be a full investigation of this failure."

I want to make clear that I was never privy to any details of the Varela case and so I do not know if the case workers handling this case made mistakes or not and therefore could not know if Omaree’s death could have been prevented.  

Both case workers that I know that were involved with the Varela case were very experienced. One has at least 10 years as a case worker and the other (who was named by the media) has 17 years experience as a case worker.  The one with 17 years is employed in the West Bernalillo County office and she is the most senior case worker in Bernalillo County (East or West).  I believe she was the last case worker to handle the Varela case but I don’t know that for sure.  

I don't think any rational thinking person could lay the blame for Omaree's death on one of these case workers. I feel that if (and that’s a big if) they did miss something, it has more to do with the fact that they are overworked and have too many cases assigned to them. I don’t see that as their fault. 

When I said there needs to be a full investigation, I am definitely calling for one from the top down. I worry that CYFD upper management will take this case and implement "new strategies" that all case workers must take in all future cases, thus making their job even more difficult. In essence, punishing them with even more work (a "mini-solution") because a child died and they feel that is not acceptable. 

I do want to add that, from what I have heard from my CYFD friends, some of CYFD’s upper management have shown a lot of care and concern for this case worker’s feelings, checking on her and asking how she is holding up, so there is hope that CYFD’s upper management may be, on some level, handling this in a positive, helpful way.

I stand by my solution that you printed, the number of case workers needs to be doubled so as to reduce caseloads and higher wages need to be paid so they can attract and keep good case workers on board.  I would also add that CYFD's upper management needs to have much more respect for their more experienced case workers and not “drive them away” as is the case in the office I worked in.  

An almost 100 percent turnover of a staff in less than 3 years is unacceptable.  By my conservative count, almost 200 years of experience left that floor in those 2½ years.  That many years of experience cannot be easily or quickly recovered….

Again, thank you for putting this together.

George Ortega (pseudonym)