a Better Bubble™
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The New Bedford Light. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun looking at possible antitrust issues in the New England fishing industry, amid growing concern about consolidation and market dominance by private equity investors.
Representatives of two fishing industry groups said that two DOJ lawyers interviewed them in September. “We focused on how this level of consolidation is a regulatory failure,” said Mark DeCristoforo, executive director of the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, who was interviewed. His organization represents a diverse coalition of fishermen and related businesses, all of whom he said have been impacted by regulations that favor only the largest companies.
Brendan Ballou and Richard Mosier, special counsels for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, spoke on a conference call with DeCristoforo and a representative of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, who asked not to be named. Apart from its law enforcement actions, the Antitrust Division often initiates policy discussions with experts and insiders to learn more about the competitive dynamics in a particular industry.
Following the interview, Ballou emailed DeCristoforo to request a copy of a controversial proposal that independent fishermen feared would enable private equity-backed companies to dominate the lucrative scallop market.
“We are looking forward to digging further into this general issue to understand the competition concerns and possible ways to address it,” Ballou emailed DeCristoforo.
In an earlier email, Ballou said he was inquiring based on an investigation published on July 6 by ProPublica and The New Bedford Light. The investigation found that labor conditions have deteriorated as an overhaul of federal regulations, adopted in 2010, has allowed private equity firms and foreign investors to dominate parts of the New England fishing industry.
One such firm is Blue Harvest Fisheries, which operates out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and is the largest holder of permits to catch groundfish such as pollock, haddock and ocean perch. The investigation traced the company’s ownership to a billionaire Dutch family via a private equity firm. Over the past seven years, records show, the company has purchased the rights to catch 12% of groundfish in the region, approaching the antitrust cap of 15.5%. It further boosts its market share by leasing fishing rights from other permit owners. There are no antitrust restrictions on leasing and very little transparency; the identities of specific lessors and lessees go unreported.
A spokesperson for Blue Harvest Fisheries said that the DOJ had not contacted the company. He said the company would welcome any inquiries. Ballou and a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment for this article. Mosier could not be reached for comment.
Blue Harvest has said in past statements that it is “dedicated to acting as a responsible steward of the vitally important domestic U.S. fishing industry and actively supports regulation for the benefit of the industry at large and the communities in which we serve.” The Coast Guard approved its “ownership and capital structure,” it said.
New Bedford, a small city on the southern coast of Massachusetts, is the heart of New England’s fishing industry and the top-earning commercial fishing port in the nation. Despite this growth, the number of employers in New Bedford’s fishing industry has dropped by more than 30% in the last decade, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Those still employed are working longer hours. In a federal survey published last year, 45% of fishermen reported working 18 hours or more per day, up from 32% in 2012.
After the investigation was published, three U.S. senators condemned what they described as lax government antitrust policies. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., urged a review by the DOJ.
“This alarming investigation raises serious concern about possible violations of federal law,” Blumenthal said in a July statement. “A powerful foreign private equity giant has gained huge power over a vital American industry.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department, regulates the fishing industry. In September, the regional council that advises NOAA on fisheries regulation in New England shot down, by a 15-1 vote, the proposal that Ballou had requested a copy of earlier that month. Backed by Blue Harvest and other large companies, but opposed by many independent fishermen, the proposal would have lifted a prohibition on leasing of the rights to catch scallops.
“This is being driven by the largest companies on the East Coast,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, addressing the regional council before the vote. “This will lead to consolidation because it is intended to lead to consolidation.” He added, “Small businesses will go out of business and the port economy will suffer.”
“Private equity already has a grip on the industry,” council member Eric Hansen said after the vote. The proposal “would have given the largest companies more power to consolidate,” he said.
Congress is concerned as well. A recent bill passed by the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, as part of an effort to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary regulatory framework for the fishing industry, would create more transparency in the opaque permit ownership and leasing markets. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August, also allocated $20 million to NOAA to “improve agency transparency, accountability, and public engagement.”
The DOJ has probed antitrust issues in the fishing industry before. An investigation by the department led to the 2020 sentencing of Chris Lischewski, the former chief executive of Bumble Bee Seafoods, to 40 months in prison for conspiring to fix prices of canned tuna. Lischewski was also a Blue Harvest director and investor. Lischewski resigned from the board during the investigation and his ownership stake was transferred to his wife, a Blue Harvest spokesperson said this week.
Ballou first contacted DeCristoforo on Sept. 8. “I read the recent ProPublica piece on consolidation in the New England fishing industry, and your organization’s recent statement on proposed changes to scallop fishing boat leasing regulations,” Ballou wrote. “We were wondering if you might be willing to talk about the general issues the industry faces, and potential policy solutions.”
On Sept. 13, DeCristoforo spoke to Ballou and Mosier over the phone from his office, which is stationed along Boston’s Fish Pier. The interview lasted about 30 minutes.
The DOJ lawyers “seemed to be in education mode,” said the representative of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a Massachusetts-based group that advocates for independent fishermen, who was also interviewed.
DeCristoforo said he was eager to air his organization’s grievances with a regulatory system that he said unjustly favors the largest companies. But he was also skeptical of the DOJ’s ability to address what he described as structural issues allowing private equity to take over the industry.
“This is not the fault of one Wild West company. This is a systemic issue,” he said this week. “What we need is true reform to the regulatory scheme that has forced this consolidation in the first place.”
“Our industry has been decimated,” he said. “We want it to remain an industry that a young person can enter and be able to prosper and thrive.”
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The public has largely stopped paying attention to what’s happening inside shelters and other facilities that house immigrant children since President Donald Trump left office, and particularly since the end of his administration’s zero tolerance policy, which separated families at the southern border.
But the shelter system remains in place under President Joe Biden. The numbers can fluctuate but, as of earlier this week, more than 9,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were in custody, according to data from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the privately run shelters.
The vast majority are children and teens from Central America who entered the country through the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian. The shelter system is designed to house these children temporarily — the average length of stay is about a month — until they can be placed with a relative or family friend or, in some cases, in foster care.
Last fall, ProPublica reported on one Chicago shelter’s failure to meet the language and mental health needs of dozens of traumatized Afghan children and teens who’d been brought to the country without family by the U.S. during its widely criticized military pullout from Afghanistan. Many of them had no one who could take them in; some tried to kill themselves, harmed others or ran away.
Months later, we saw those problems repeat themselves as the youths were transferred to other facilities. Office of Refugee Resettlement officials have said they’re doing their best to support the Afghan children by providing interpreters, mental health services and additional staffing. As of this week, some 84 unaccompanied Afghan minors remain in ORR custody, federal officials said. Some have been in custody for a year.
Another issue we’ve come across in our reporting is ORR’s system of “significant incident reports.” Shelter staff are required to report to ORR any “significant incidents” that affect children’s health, well-being or safety.
The system is intended to elevate serious concerns and protect children, but over the years, dozens of shelter staffers, advocates and children have told ProPublica that it has been overused and negatively affects children. For example, Afghan youth have expressed “extreme distress around how SIRs will be used against them,” said Neha Desai, senior director of immigration for the National Center for Youth Law, which is authorized to interview children in U.S. immigration custody.
“They’ve asked whether these reports will impact if or when their parents are evacuated” from Afghanistan, Desai said in an email. Some children “have been told by staff that SIRs will delay their release from custody.”
Last month, two prominent immigrant rights organizations that work with children in ORR custody issued a report calling for an overhaul of the incident reporting system. The report, “Punishing trauma: Incident Reporting and Immigrant Children in Government Custody,” is based on surveys last year of staff at ORR facilities and of attorneys and social workers who work with unaccompanied children.
An ORR official did not respond to the report’s specific findings. But, in a statement, the official said significant incident reports are primarily meant as internal records to document and communicate incidents for the agency’s awareness and follow-up. Last year, ORR revised its policies to limit the sharing and misuse of confidential and mental health information contained in SIRs. (For example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was previously using notes taken during therapy sessions inside shelters against children in immigation court, The Washington Post reported.)
“ORR continues to clarify through technical assistance to care providers and ongoing policy development that SIRs should never be used by care provider staff as a form of discipline or punishment of the child,” the ORR official said.
I spoke with the primary authors of the report that calls for the overhaul of the incident reporting system. Jane Liu is senior litigation attorney for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, and Azadeh Erfani is a senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center. We discussed how significant incident reports are used inside shelters and the authors’ ideas for reform.
This is a condensed, edited version of that conversation.
What would you say are the biggest challenges that kids face when they’re inside ORR facilities?Jane Liu: Children do best in a family-based setting, but the large majority of the children in government custody are in large congregate care settings, where they often face a lot of restrictions on their movement, monitoring and supervision. They’ve also likely just navigated a very difficult migration journey that may have included exposure to violence and traumatic experiences. They may have suffered traumatic experiences in their home country. They may have been separated from their families at the border. Then they go into custody and they’re navigating this completely unfamiliar environment in a large-scale setting where they often aren’t receiving the individualized care that they need. They may also be facing language barriers. And so it’s extremely stressful for them and disorienting.
What prompted you to look into significant incident reports, or SIRs?Azadeh Erfani: They have been on both of our radars for some time now. They are a really central facet for children’s legal cases. A child’s placement level — where they end up within the security hierarchy of ORR — is greatly impacted by the number and the type of SIRs that they have.
On a personal level, I’ve represented kids with dozens of SIRs. I’ve seen up close how they really have widespread impact for kids who end up being branded as “problem children” and basically are stuck in the system with very little recourse.
What kinds of behavior can lead to a child accumulating these reports?Erfani: It could be sharing food. It could be getting up and going to the bathroom at the wrong time. It can also be a child acting out, testing boundaries. It could be a child simply disclosing something about their past. If they disclose that they’ve survived trafficking, abuse or neglect, or have been preyed upon by gangs in their home country, those kinds of things can trigger an SIR. So the scope is really broad, which really leads to overreporting.
What are the consequences for children who accumulate SIRs?Erfani: ICE has the authority to review every single child’s case when they are about to turn 18. They make a decision to either take them into adult custody or release them on their own recognizance. At that juncture, SIRs play a pivotal role.
We’ve also seen SIRs getting used in immigration court or in asylum interviews to basically put the child on the spot to defend something that was written up about them that they may not even have known was written up.
I’ve heard over and over from people who work in the system that the accumulation of SIRs makes it harder for kids to leave shelters, even if there is an available sponsor. Can you talk about how that happens?Liu: It can create all sorts of barriers to release. It can lead to children getting “stepped up” [to more secure, restrictive facilities] and then it’s harder to step back down. Often a long-term foster care provider won’t accept a child unless they’ve had a period without behavioral SIRs. But even if a child has a potential sponsor, we’ve seen it lead to requirements for home studies where ORR will say that “These SIRs indicate that the child may have a need, and we need to investigate whether the sponsor can fill that need.” Ultimately, what that means is that it delays the release of the child to a family member.
In our reporting on unaccompanied Afghan kids in ORR custody, I was surprised to see how often shelter staff called police to deal with behavioral issues. How common is police intervention at shelters?Liu: It’s a much bigger problem than the public may be aware of. Often those children are not getting the services that they need, such as mental health support. And by that I mean holistic services tailored to the unique experiences of each child. They’re also usually facing prolonged periods of custody, so they’re also experiencing detention fatigue. And it’s not surprising that they can act out and that there can be these sorts of behavioral challenges. But what is extremely troubling is that when these behaviors are documented in SIRs, they can sometimes prompt ORR facilities to report the incident to police, leading to unnecessary interactions for children with law enforcement and even arrests.
What should shelters be doing?Erfani: One of our recommendations to ORR is to actually train staff in crisis prevention. For the most part, there’s a very passive approach to incidents. There’s not a lot of scrutiny with respect to how to prevent these crises from erupting in the first place.
SIRs very much lack the context of the child. Being in a congregate setting indefinitely can be incredibly, incredibly aggravating. And of course, they are bringing tons of trauma because of their backgrounds. So oftentimes these triggers, this background, if they receive bad news from the home country, those kinds of things are absent from the SIR and make it look like this child is incredibly erratic. That’s also really alarming from a trauma-informed perspective.
This makes me think about the dozens of Afghan children who remain in federal custody. Can you talk about what role SIRs have played in these kids’ experiences inside the shelters?Erfani: The Afghan kids walked into a really terribly broken system right after escaping a war zone. The fact that they may not have had a sponsor lined up meant that they had to spend more time in custody. And every day they kept seeing kids leaving while they had to stay. That’s heartbreaking. Then you pile on the language barriers, the cultural competency barriers. A lot of their behavior is a manifestation of trauma that staff isn’t equipped to understand. And it was much easier to write up reports, or call law enforcement, than it was to try to put the system on trial itself, to see what’s really missing within the facility and address those needs on a systemic level.
Inadequate staffing and turnover at shelters seems to be a chronic problem. How do you see that playing into the SIRs?Erfani: I think it’s really hard on staff. The SIR system is incredibly time-consuming. They have to dedicate tons and tons of resources into it. The rules are really intricate. When there’s turnover, for the new staff a compliance mindset can settle in, where it becomes less about that child’s needs, less about these child welfare principles, and instead about, “Well, I should probably be writing this report.”
Liu: It’s really critical that the government provides more support for facility staff, whether it be ongoing training or more funding for more staff with expertise in child welfare, mental health and the needs of immigrant children. I think it’s really up to the government to understand that children’s time in custody can be very difficult for them and figure out ways to prevent situations from escalating and being extremely harmful for children.
Have you shared your concerns or this report with ORR, and if so have you gotten any response yet?Liu: We have shared the report with the government. It is not a new revelation to ORR that this is something of huge concern for those of us who advocate for children. We have been raising concerns about SIRs in particular with greater frequency in the last couple of years.
Erfani: We strongly believe that nothing short of a complete transformation of incident reporting is going to meet their duty to these children.
It really feels like issues affecting immigrant kids in ORR custody have just fallen off the radar since Trump left office. How do you get people to pay attention?Erfani: That’s a tough one. We’re just trying to really put this problem on the map and then try to address it. And it’s not a Republican problem. It’s not a Democrat problem. It’s really something that’s in the system.
Liu: We know incident reporting is not a sexy topic. It’s not something flashy. It doesn’t involve Gov. Greg Abbott or Gov. Ron DeSantis. And so it’s hard to get people to see the urgency. But I think it sort of goes to the whole family separation thing. When that occurred, I think people could understand the humanity involved. That children are not being treated as children, and children are being traumatized by government actions.
I think a lot of people think of their own children. How would they want their own children to be treated? If your child was acting out or talking back to you, would you want a report written up and for that report to be used against your child for all sorts of purposes? The reality is that immigrant kids, particularly those in custody, are not treated like other kids. And that should be a concern to all of us. That’s a failure on all our parts.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Searchlight New Mexico. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Four years ago, kids in New Mexico’s child welfare system were in a dire situation. Kids were being cycled through all sorts of emergency placements: offices, youth homeless shelters, residential treatment centers rife with abuse. Some never found anything stable and ended up on the streets after they turned 18.
A lawsuit brought by 14 foster children in 2018 claimed the state was “locking New Mexico’s foster children into a vicious cycle of declining physical, mental and behavioral health.” The state settled the case in February 2020 and committed to reforms.
But two and a half years later, New Mexico has delivered on just a portion of those promises, leaving some of the state’s most vulnerable foster youth without the mental health services they need.
In a settlement agreement for the suit, known as Kevin S. after the name of the lead plaintiff, the state committed to eliminating inappropriate placements and putting every child into a licensed foster home. It also agreed to build a new system of community-based mental health services that would be available to every child in New Mexico, not just those in foster care.
Yet the Children, Youth and Families Department continues to make hundreds of placements in emergency facilities every year. Although CYFD has reduced the number of children in residential treatment centers, it continues to place high-needs children and teens in youth homeless shelters. Mental health services for foster youth, which includes all kids in CYFD protective services custody, not just those in foster homes, are severely lacking, lawyers and child advocates say.
The department said it has worked to build new mental health programs and services for kids. “Most of these efforts are successful and are on a path to expansion,” Rob Johnson, public information officer for CYFD, said in a written statement.
“This is an incredible amount of progress made in a relatively short time in a system that had been systemically torn down and neglected,” he wrote. “We’re not where we want to be, and we continue to look and move ahead to create and strengthen the state supports for those with behavioral health needs.”
A Push to Get Kids Out of Residential Treatment CentersThe Kevin S. lawsuit was filed amid a national reckoning over child welfare agencies’ reliance on residential treatment centers. Similar lawsuits in Oregon, Texas and elsewhere accused states of inappropriately placing kids in residential treatment centers, often far from their homes, and in other types of so-called congregate care. Kids placed in those facilities got worse, not better, the suits argued.
After Texas failed to comply with court-ordered fixes to its child welfare system, a federal judge said she plans to fine the state. The Oregon lawsuit is proceeding despite the state’s efforts to have a judge dismiss the case.
Several months before the New Mexico suit was filed, federal lawmakers passed the Family First Prevention Services Act, which redirected federal funding in order to pressure states into phasing out large residential treatment centers. In their place, the law called for a new type of facility to treat children with acute mental health needs: small, strictly regulated facilities called qualified residential treatment programs.
Child welfare advocates across the country welcomed these reforms. But they warned that shutting down residential treatment centers without alternatives could leave kids in an equally desperate situation — a scenario they said was reminiscent of the effort to shut down mental hospitals starting in the 1950s.
“I believe we do need a change in group care,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said during a 2016 debate in Congress. “One has to ask where these children will go if those group facilities are no longer available.”
“We Know We Can Find Them Better Beds”The first residential treatment center in New Mexico to close, in early 2019, was the state’s largest: a 120-bed facility in Albuquerque called Desert Hills that was the target of lawsuits and an investigation into physical and sexual abuse.
Many of the lawsuits’ claims — which Desert Hills and its parent company Acadia Healthcare denied or claimed insufficient knowledge of — remain unresolved pending trials. Other cases have been settled, with undisclosed terms.
A spokesman for Acadia said Desert Hills decided not to renew its license “given the severe challenges in the New Mexico system” and worked with CYFD on a transition plan.
Desert Hills in Albuquerque, which closed following abuse accusations (Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica)“Of course we are not going to drop kids on the street,” CYFD’s chief counsel at the time, Kate Girard, told the Santa Fe New Mexican soon after. “We know we can find them better beds.”
Some of the kids who had been living at Desert Hills were sent to homeless shelters. Others went to residential treatment centers in other states, which the CYFD secretary at the time publicly admitted put kids out of sight and at higher risk of abuse.
State officials have said they send kids out of state when they don’t have appropriate facilities in New Mexico, and they make placements based on individualized plans for each child.
Those out-of-state residential treatment centers included facilities run by Acadia. One foster teen was raped by a staffer at her out-of-state placement, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit. The facility has denied the allegation in court; Acadia has denied knowledge of the alleged assault.
In January 2019, a few months after the Kevin S. lawsuit was filed, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took office after promising during her campaign to address the state’s dismal national standing in child welfare. She asked for an increase in CYFD’s annual budget, and the legislature complied, appropriating an 11% increase over the year before.
“A top CYFD priority is increasing access to community-based mental health services for children and youth,” Lujan Grisham said in a speech in June 2019. “We are expanding and will continue to expand these programs aggressively and relentlessly.”
State officials settled the Kevin S. suit in February 2020, agreeing to a road map for reforming its foster care system. Among them: a deadline later that year to stop housing kids in CYFD offices when workers couldn’t find a foster home.
That deadline passed, but CYFD didn’t stop. The practice continues today.
While the state is committed to do everything it can to keep children from sleeping in offices, sometimes — such as in the middle of the night — the best option is to let children stay in an office while staff search for an appropriate placement, CYFD spokesperson Charlie Moore-Pabst wrote in an email.
All of CYFD's county offices have places for children to sleep, he explained. “These rooms are furnished like a youth’s bedroom, with beds, linens, entertainment, clothing, and access to bathrooms with showers,” he wrote. "They’re not merely office spaces."
The state continued to crack down on residential treatment centers. In 2021, a facility for youth with sexual behavior problems closed after the state opened an investigation into abuse allegations. Some of those residents were moved to homeless shelters.
“From our point of view, it was almost clear that the state didn’t want us to be there,” said Nathan Crane, an attorney for Youth Health Associates, the company that ran the facility. Crane said that to his knowledge, none of the allegations against the treatment center were substantiated. “We mutually agreed to shut the door and walk away.”
Johnson said that when it learned of safety concerns at these facilities, it promptly investigated. “Following the investigations,” Johnson wrote, “CYFD determined that it was in the best interest of the children in its care to assist in the closure of the facilities and find alternate arrangements for each child.”
Meanwhile, the state lagged in meeting its commitments to build a better mental health system. The state had met only 11 of its 49 targets in the Kevin S. settlement as of mid-2021, according to experts appointed to monitor its progress.
Although the parties to the suit agreed to extend deadlines during the pandemic, the plaintiffs said in a November 2021 press release, “This dismal pace of change is not acceptable. The State’s delayed and incomplete responses demonstrate that children in the State’s custody are still not receiving the care they need to heal and grow.”
“Sick to My Stomach After They Put All Those Kids on the Street”In December 2021, an Albuquerque residential treatment center called Bernalillo Academy closed amid an investigation into abuse allegations. The largest remaining facility at the time, Bernalillo specialized in treating kids with autism and other developmental disabilities.
“Being accused of abuse and neglect is a serious offense that questions our integrity and goes against what we are working hard for here at Bernalillo,” Amir Rafiei, then Bernalillo Academy’s executive director, wrote in an email to CYFD challenging the investigation.
Child welfare officials called an emergency meeting of shelter directors, looking for beds for the displaced kids. CYFD went on to place some of those kids in shelters.
”It’s important to note that placements were only made to shelters that fit their admission criteria,” Johnson wrote in the statement to Searchlight and ProPublica.
Bernalillo Academy (Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica)Michael Bronson, a former CYFD licensing official, said state officials had no plan for where to put the kids housed in those residential treatment centers.
“I thought it was almost criminal,” said Bronson, who conducted the investigations into Desert Hills and Bernalillo. “I was sick to my stomach after they put all those kids on the street.”
CYFD Secretary Barbara Vigil insisted in an interview that officials did have a plan. Teams of employees involved in the children’s care discussed each case in detail, she said: “Each of those children had a transition plan out of the facility into a safe and relatively stable placement.”
But Emily Martin, CYFD Protective Services Bureau Chief, acknowledged, “When facilities have closed, it has left a gap.”
There are now 130 beds in residential treatment centers in the state, less than half the number before the Kevin S. suit was filed.
State Says It’s Working on New ProgramsFrustrated with the lack of progress, the Kevin S. plaintiffs’ attorneys started a formal dispute resolution process in June. The state agreed to take specific steps to comply with the settlement agreement.
The monitors have written another report on the state’s compliance with the settlement, which is due to become public later this year. Sara Crecca, one of the children’s attorneys involved in the settlement, said her team has been involved in discussions with the monitors about the report, but she’s not allowed to disclose them.
“What I can say is that my clients have seen no substantial change,” she said. “If the state was following the road map in the settlement, that wouldn’t be the case.”
Officials stressed that they are making progress. They say they have opened more sites that can work with families to create plans of care; expanded programs for teen parents and teenagers aging out of care; and made community health clinics available to foster children.
CYFD also has funded community health workers and created a program to train families as treatment foster care providers. Four families are participating in that program, Johnson, the CYFD spokesperson, wrote. The department plans to open two small group homes, with six beds each, for youth with high needs, including aggression.
Four years after the federal Family First Act was passed, New Mexico has not licensed a single qualified residential treatment program, the type of facility that is supposed to replace residential treatment centers. The state said in an email to Searchlight and ProPublica that it is “laying the foundation” to create those facilities.
In the meantime, because of the law, the state is on the hook to pay for any stays in congregate care settings that last longer than two weeks.
In August, Vigil appeared before New Mexico legislators to update them on the department’s progress in building a new system of mental health services. In response to pointed questions, she said the department is required by law to serve the highest-needs kids, but it wasn’t doing so. “Quite frankly,” she said, “we don't have a system of care in place to do that.”
Another deadline looms. By December, the state must have all of those new programs available to the children in its care.
“Will it be 100%?” Vigil said in an interview. “Again, I would say no, but that doesn't mean that the system of care is not improving tremendously under this administration.”
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window.jQuery || document.write('') This form requires JavaScript to complete. Powered by CityBase Screendoor. // Uncomment this line and set it to the CSS class that your website uses for buttons: // FormRenderer.BUTTON_CLASS = ''; new FormRenderer({"project_id":"PKJPd5BcviX4RNIX"});Mollie Simon contributed research.
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