September 29 – Ryan Biszick entered the New Mexico foster care system when she was 15.
During her three years in state custody, Biszick said she was placed in about 60 homes, mostly for temporary stays. She said she often disagreed with her family and the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, and argued about special education services Biszick said she needed at school.
But one of the few people who stuck by her all the way was her court-appointed special advocate, CASA, a volunteer who helped her advocate for herself, especially when it came to making sure schools followed Biszick’s Individualized Education Program .
“They did a lot of the things my parents would do,” says Biszick, who is now 21. “…They were always there.”
A CASA is usually the most consistent person in the life of a child under state custody. But young people in New Mexico face significant gaps in coverage of the voluntary CASA programs, which struggle to find volunteers and funding, especially in small communities, and do not exist at all in at least seven of the mostly smaller, rural counties of the state.
Across New Mexico, there are 2,064 children in state custody, according to the most recent data on a CYFD dashboard. New Mexico CASA Association data shows that only 824 children were assigned volunteer advocates.
In at least seven of New Mexico’s 33 counties – McKinley, Cibola, De Baca, Harding, Quay, Curry and Roosevelt – there is no local program to assign CASAs to children in state custody. And no one is traveling from outside these counties to pick up the slack, New Mexico CASA Association Executive Director Veronica Montaño-Pilch said.
“Everyone wants a CASA,” she said. “There’s just not enough.”
The gap in CASA programs, court officials and others say, can leave children without a specific person in their corner who can speak to the nuances of what a child is going through at that moment. In many cases, CASAs were the only voice in the courtroom, advocating solely for the child in the case, said 9th Judicial District Judge Donna Mowrer.
Mowrer’s district, which includes Roosevelt and Curry counties, once had a CASA program, but that disappeared years ago, she said. The absence of CASAs leaves her without an important source of information about the children in the cases she hears.
For questions about the subjects in which a child was doing well in school, Mowrer said she turned to the CASA. When asked about a child’s IEP, a federal plan required for special education students in public schools, Mowrer said CASA was often the one who knew the most.
“I don’t have that neutral voice, someone who cares for the child on his own terms, not someone who tries to balance the child’s needs with something else or someone who doesn’t try to bring up the department side of things” , says Mowrer. said.
“It’s that extra detail of information that is essential to how I as a judge can help that child,” she added.
In the absence of CASAs, Mowrer says getting those details is often her job. And because the child only sees Mowrer in the courtroom and has no relationship with her, it can be an awkward and inefficient conversation.
“It’s hard for the child to advocate for what they need,” Mowrer said. “They can tell me they like photography, but they’re not going to tell me they really need a new camera to achieve their goal.”
In the 2nd Judicial District, which includes Bernalillo County, retired juvenile court judge John Romero said CASAs were the “eyes and ears” for a child and provided the court reports that were the best source of information he had as a judge.
“The child welfare department report was quite redundant at times,” he said. “Sometimes it was a cut-and-paste from the previous report and did not always include current information, especially when the former employee had gotten a new job or left the department and there was someone new to the business who had not a full picture of what was going on.”
Another factor contributing to the scarcity of CASAs is the challenge of the work.
In general, CASAs are volunteers. But Chris Boortz, a CASA who lives in Santa Fe, said it can be just as demanding as a full-time job, especially if a young person is in crisis.
One week, she recalled, one of her young people was suddenly fired, just as Boortz was going on vacation. Boortz said she spent the first week of that vacation constantly on the phone and in meetings. Her job was to prepare a report to place the child in an emergency foster home.
“Because things change so quickly at CYFD and staff come and go so often, no one on the team knew enough about the youth to be able to write an accurate report on what his needs were… his strengths, his challenges , etc.,” she said. “That’s why I ended up writing this rather long report.”
Being a CASA requires a certain kind of motivation, said Linda Griego, executive director of the CASA program in Valencia and Sandoval counties in the 13th Judicial District.
“It’s almost like being a social worker, except you don’t get paid for it,” Griego says. “…So I think the most important thing is that they have to be compassionate, because if you don’t have that compassion, you can’t do it.”
Griego said her program has been approached to take on CASA duties for Cibola County, also in the 13th Judicial District, which has lost its CASA program. But at the time, she said, her own program had a “shortage of volunteers that we wanted to raise to 100%” before taking on more responsibilities.
She said her program is now in a better place to take on Cibola County and she may reconsider — though she acknowledges stories from previous CASAs in that county who said finding volunteers there was difficult because the community was so small.
The CASA program in the 13th Judicial District is not the only program that has been asked to take on more responsibilities but lacked the resources to do so, Montaño-Pilch said. To close the gap between counties, she said, local CASA providers need more funding.
“We will receive a total of $1.3 million for the CASA programs,” she said. “And if you look at the number of children in care, and it costs $1,300 to serve one child, we should end up [over] $3 million.”
To that end, the state association CASA is crafting a new funding formula, which it plans to pitch to the state Administrative Office of the Courts, that would allow existing CASA programs to handle cases in neighboring counties or even get new CASA programs off the ground .
More dollars from the state, Montaño-Pilch said, would allow CASAs to do the work they ask of them.
“The state just doesn’t give us enough money to do what we do,” she said. “…CASAs are in [the] children’s code to advocate for a child. But they are not funded.”
Esteban Candelaria is a member of the staff at Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. He is responsible for the child welfare and state Department of Children, Youth and Families. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
