By Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote
© 2026 New Mexico News Services

What bothers Melissa Beery is that in all of the investigations, lawsuits and reporting on CYFD, nobody captures the day-to-day experience of children in state custody. Too many of these kids are shuffled from place to place—CYFD offices, shelters, the streets—without food, medicine or school. Or the notice of a single caring adult.

Beery is a peer support worker—someone who raised a child with mental or behavioral health issues or development delays and is trained and certified by the state to work with families in the case load of the state Children Youth and Families Department.

“We’ve walked the path,” Beery says. She’s employed by a CYFD contractor.

A recent report from the state Department of Justice may not describe day-to-day life, but the interviews with kids paint a tragic picture.

Jacob, age 12, had eight placements in his first two months in custody and more than 30 in less than six years. In congregate care and group homes, the sporadic meals were unhealthy, he received no therapy for his health issues, and nobody was taking him to school.

In one facility he was placed with teenagers who jumped him five times on his first day, sustaining a concussion; the program director didn’t intervene. Another facility was filthy and the staff abusive. He rotated through shelters in Taos, Roswell and Hobbs. At Albuquerque’s CYFD’s office, he slept in a storage closet; “meals” were goldfish crackers and bottled water, and the case worker sometimes told Jacob to find his own place to sleep and come back in the morning. The boy’s case worker at CYFD failed to check on him even monthly, the required minimum.

There are lots of Jacobs.

Beery has her own horror stories of kids with too many placements, bounced from CYFD offices around the state to shelters, where they’re not only unsafe but can just walk out.

“We play whack-a-mole with kids,” she says.

Nobody wants to talk about the kids who are older and harder to place. “Foster parents want kids 0 to 5,” she says. “Kids with behavioral health issues, nobody wants to take them. Residential treatment is almost impossible to find.”

AMIkids is a reputable national program, but New Mexico has just two facilities, in Farmington and Albuquerque, and they only take boys. “It’s hard to find therapy, hard to get an evaluation, hard to get medications.”

To Beery, one solution is helping families and keeping the kid at home. “My perspective is to keep families together. It also lines up with what the feds want to spend money on.”

“Too many times kids are taken for small things, like the house is too dirty and bug infested,” she says. Instead, the state should ask, what can we do for you? Solutions can be relatively simple. “One family had an autistic kid who wanders. Why not get a GPS tracker in his shoe? It’s better than taking him into state custody.”

An emphasis on removing kids doesn’t consider “the long-term consequences of losing the only family they’re connected to. Being untethered is a hard way to go through life.”

CYFD has a Family Services division that’s supposed to do everything Beery mentions. It’s as dysfunctional as the rest of the agency.

“It’s disheartening how bad it is,” she says.

I should mention here that Beery differs somewhat from reformers like Maralyn Beck, founder of the watchdog New Mexico Child First Network, who believes in foster care and whose organization provides support to foster parents. The two do agree on how poorly CYFD is living up to its responsibilities. Considering the time needed for drug and alcohol treatment (that may not succeed), I’d say we need an all-of-the-above approach.

When Beery first wrote to me three years ago, she wanted to see CYFD dismantled and replaced by new and responsive entities. Today she proposes a cultural transformation.

“A culture shift at a massive, entrenched agency like CYFD isn’t just about hiring a new cabinet secretary, it’s about a fundamental rewiring of how the department views its mission, its staff, and the families it serves,” she writes.

She proposes “three major shocks” to the system:

• Shifting from a culture of fear and blame to a “just culture” with a focus on fixing the process and supporting families.
• Embracing transparency and oversight, including an independent Office of the Child Advocate.
• Making the job “doable for a normal human being” by capping caseloads and using modern tools to reduce paperwork.

The elephant in the room is political will, she says. The CYFD secretary, a political appointee, changes with each administration. A true culture shift would mean appointing a leader with a multi-year contract, like a Federal Reserve governor.

Whether we dismantle or transform CYFD, whatever happens is not just on the governor, it’s on all of us.