Our Children Youth and Families Department is responsible for the most vulnerable children in our state. But the department’s work goes largely unchecked.

So, in 2021 when CYFD opened a new Office of Children’s Rights to provide internal oversight, people were encouraged.

There are new questions about that office after KOB 4 learned employees were told to stop investigating complaints.

“These kids need somebody to advocate for them,” said Jennifer Martinez.

For a year or so, Jennifer Martinez was that person. Martinez was hired by CYFD in 2022. She created a grievance system in the newly-formed Office of Children’s Rights.

“The idea was really to have an office within the department that can advocate on behalf of children and work on some of the issues they’re seeing,” said CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados.

Martinez investigated complaints of department missteps to ensure the New Mexico Foster Child and Youth Bill of Rights was being followed.

“This is not to say you did anything wrong or that you should be punished. It was ‘Here’s how we missed this,’ and ‘Here’s some recommendations for improvement,’” said Martinez.

During her time as a children’s rights specialist, she wrote 23 reports. She investigated why children missed medical appoints or why workers missed entries in case notes or missed visits altogether.

She discovered, a child with 38 different placements missed so much school, he had only completed fifth grade when he should have been in ninth.

Casados was unaware such a report existed.

The department’s website highlights the work from her office, saying it would lead to accountability and system improvement. But it’s unclear what was ever done with those findings. 

We asked Secretary Casados. 

“So, those investigations, and that was really one of the issues, the office never was intended to investigate cases,” said Casados.

That’s exactly what Martinez said she heard after Casados took over: advocate, don’t investigate.

“We were pretty much told that we needed to stop doing investigations and writing down our findings and recommendations,” said Martinez.

So, she said she felt forced to leave in 2023.

Now, for close to a year, she said the Office of Children’s Rights, once 10 people strong, has had a staff of just two.

According to records we requested, it now houses only immigration specialists.

“I think it’s misleading. I think it’s frustrating, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Maralyn Beck of New Mexico Child First Network. 

Beck believes the department has used that office as yet another shield from accountability, claiming to lawmakers, as recent as 2023, that it’s an internal process similar to an ombudsman.

Democrats and Republicans were trying to pass a bill that would have created independent oversight of the department. It did not make it across the finish line.

“It’s very frustrating to hear CYFD say ‘We don’t need an outside office, we have this internally.’ For the last year, they haven’t even had a staff member in that office,” said Beck.

Secretary Casados disputes that, saying as employees left, others have taken over the work.

“The work has not stopped, people are still getting the services and the advocacy is continuing,” said Casados.

Though she admits there’s no public data to support that. We also found discrepancies between the data we received from CYFD from what’s publicly available on the dashboard. We have submitted an Inspection of Public Records Act for all data used to create those graphs on Together We Thrive, but we were told the request was broad and burdensome, going on three months.

Casados told us, now, calls requiring investigation go to the CYFD inspector general, but she’s unaware of any new findings or investigations.

“So the work still comes in through the phone lines, through email, the email is still monitored every single day. Referrals still come out,” said Casados.

The grievance number does still work, but no one answered our calls. The voicemail was too full to leave a message.

“At the end of the day, I really created a great system for children and youth to have a voice when their rights were violated and a process for them to be heard and that’s all I’m advocating for,” said Martinez.

Casados said the department is working to build that office back up, under a new name: Office of Advocacy. The department hired a new director within the last month.