Aug. 14—Children’s Court hearings to determine if a child has been abused or neglected can drag on for a year or more in New Mexico.
To address this issue, the Children’s Code Reform Task Force has recommended a 90-day deadline for courts to complete an adjudicatory hearing after it has begun. In an adjudicatory hearing, a judge decides if there is reason to determine a child has been abused or neglected based on allegations involved in removing a child from their home.
If the deadline is not met, the case would be dismissed and could not be refiled under the recommendation.
The task force is one of at least two in the state working to draft recommendations for changes to laws that affect children and reforms for the child welfare system.
“Adjudications could have been commenced on time … and then that hearing was not recommenced for nine months, even a year, and still dragged on forever because of time constraints for attorneys and judges,” retired Children’s Court Judge John Romero told the Legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on Tuesday. “So that’s a very important addition to the timelines requirement.”
But the idea has been met with some concern. Advocates and lawmakers have argued New Mexico’s child welfare system is not equipped to meet such deadlines, citing vacancy rates within the state Children, Youth and Families Department, specifically among Children’s Court attorneys.
“Yes, in an ideal world, we have to adhere to these timelines … but we’re not living in an ideal world,” said Maralyn Beck, founder and executive director of the New Mexico Child First Network. “… If we were to implement this law today, we would endanger the lives of the children.”
Cristen Conley, the chair of the task force, likened a deadline for adjudicatory hearings to a defendant’s right in a criminal case to a speedy trial.
“If we were talking about a criminal case, how many people should be incarcerated unfairly or prejudicially because we don’t have the system in place to properly prosecute?” she said. “That’s what we’re doing, is that if we don’t have a way to properly proceed or adjudicate in these cases, then how many families are losing their children?”
“What we have to be doing is thinking about the well-being of the children first, and their family second, and then the state mechanism third,” she added.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, expressed concern over the flip-side.
“If a kid comes in with a broken arm and … that case gets dismissed because of a problem at CYFD and a lack of resources, then something happens later, and the kid’s abused again, the other arm is broken — can that first case be brought up?” she said. “… I don’t want to punish a child for a broken CYFD system.”
Esteban Candelaria is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. He covers child welfare and the state Children, Youth and Families Department. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
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