Jun. 6—Months after publicly pledging to bring an end to the practice of allowing children in state custody to sleep in child welfare offices, a top official told lawmakers some of those young people have moved into a new home — and more are soon to follow.

Children, Youth and Families Cabinet Secretary Teresa Casados told members of the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee on Thursday four children already have moved into a new multiservice home in Albuquerque, which has enough room for 12 boys ages 12 and older. The other eligible boys are expected to be moved in by June 14.

“Last year I committed to ending office stays, and this is where we are right now,” Casados said, adding that while the house does still technically count as an “office stay,” the provider operating it has tried to make the environment feel home-like.

It’s a first tangible step, not the end of the process. Casados told lawmakers the Children, Youth and Families Department has 21 young people staying in its offices and is in talks with another provider to create a similar facility for girls ages 12 and older.

“Hopefully that will not take us as long,” she said. “They’re already licensed as a provider for a multiservice home, and so we’re hoping that can happen a little bit quicker.”

Casados said the boys’ home took longer than she would have liked to set up, but described the progress as a “huge win” for the agency.

CYFD has had some youth stay in its offices in recent years — in some cases for weeks at a time — because of a lack of options. Employees have reported the arrangement can create unsafe environments; in 2022, one foster youth was accused last year of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old in the bathroom of the agency’s Albuquerque facility, according to earlier reports.

The update from Casados, who was confirmed to the position in February after months of leading CYFD following the 2023 resignation of Barbara Vigil, came in the middle of the committee’s three-day examination of New Mexico’s troubled child welfare system. The agency has struggled with staff vacancies and frequent turnover, heavy caseloads for workers, a backlog of investigations, a dearth of foster families and high rates of child maltreatment.

Ending the practice of housing kids in CYFD offices was one of several goals Casados listed during a legislative hearing nearly a year ago.

About 2,030 young people are in CYFD custody — “a large number for a state this size,” Casados told lawmakers.

The agency has about half that many foster families. Many of those foster families do accept more than one child, however, and as of last week, there were about 190 open beds in foster homes, Casados said.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to find a home for every child.

“People ask the question a lot, ‘If we have open beds, why do we have kids sleeping in offices?’ ” Casados said. “I think the answer for that is we need to really work with our foster families to make sure that they are prepared to take kids that have higher needs. They’re not.”

The agency also just needs more foster families in general, she said.

“I’m open to ideas that people have on how we can partner to really bring in more foster families,” Casados said.

As for the kids currently sleeping in offices or in the new boys’ home in Albuquerque, Casados said finding them a permanent home is the goal, which can be tricky for those with more intense needs.

“I believe that as we build out those foster families, and especially those enhanced foster families … we will be able to start to transition some of those individuals from this community location to individual foster homes,” she said. “But my hope is that we can do that transition there, at a location where [the young people] feel most comfortable.”

Casados said in the meantime, staff at the new facility are doing what they can to create a welcoming atmosphere.

The boys’ home has four bedrooms, each with space for three youths, Casados said, and the contractor running the site has done “an amazing job” staffing it.

“They’ve brought in an educator, a nurse, a chef, and … are making it as homey as possible,” she said. “It has a great outdoor area for the youth, which I think we’re going to try to do some gardening for them back there.”

A classroom has been set up in the house, and some of the youth will attend school virtually for the time being, with staff reaching out to the schools they most recently attended.

“The downside to that is, youth are leaving their communities,” Casados said. “So we have kids from Roswell or Chaves County or Doña Ana [County] who will be housed there while we find more permanent placement and working with that.”

The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions is also working with CYFD to make some pre-apprenticeship programs available, Casados said.

While the practice of having young people sleep at CYFD offices is widely viewed as problematic, transitions are hard for some children in the system.

“Many of them, even though we find them placement, they are so comfortable with our staff that they want to come back,” she said.

Casados said one newly moved-in boy left the home and walked back to the CYFD office.

“We said, under no circumstances are you to allow him to stay at the office tonight, because as soon as we open that door for them to come back, we will not be able to shut that,” she said.

The lack of options for young people sleeping in CYFD offices isn’t the only capacity strain the agency has experienced. The agency fell far behind in its investigation into reports of alleged abuse and negligent, and the resulting backlog of cases — which the agency defines as cases that have been open for more than 45 days — nearly reached 2,500 in December.

Casados also told lawmakers CYFD has made progress with that backlog, and has gotten it down to about 500 or 600 cases.