New Mexico finally complying with parts of Kevin S. child welfare settlement

The 2020 settlement in the Kevin S. class action lawsuit required the Children, Youth and Families and Human Services departments to offer several trauma-based therapeutic services, such as dialectical behavioral therapy, which emphasizes mindfulness in building patients’ strategies for emotional regulation.

Last year, the departments established reimbursement rates for each of those therapeutic services and also provided compensation for the training providers needed to be able to perform them, Dana Flannery, who directs the Health Care Authority’s Medical Assistance Division, told the committee.

However, the settlement agreement required Human Services to have provided training incentives for such therapeutic services by Dec. 1, 2021, and for those services to be available to every child in state custody by Dec. 1, 2022.

The settlement agreement also required wellness checkups for children in state custody to be performed within 30 days of entering that custody by the 2021 deadline.

Flannery said those checkups within that 30-day window are underway, as per a June 21 letter of direction from Human Services to managed care organizations.

That also comes well after the original deadline.

Since the 2020 settlement, the state has taken steps to “evolve the service array” for children in state custody, including evidence-based practices that are “proven to help kids and adults manage different symptoms,” Flannery said.

The presentation comes nearly two months after the committee was told the state was headed back to arbitration over the Kevin S. settlement. At the time, CYFD Cabinet Secretary Teresa Casados said she was “very comfortable” heading back to arbitration to show what progress her department had made in recent months, while the plaintiffs’ attorneys called for the department to be held accountable over its lack of progress.

That announcement, however, did not loom large in Wednesday’s presentation.

There was some concern from the panel about communication between the various agencies on how to best deliver care to children.

Rep. Eleanor Chavez, D-Albuquerque, said she’d heard biweekly meetings to discuss barriers to treatment foster care agencies face had not been taking place.

“Communication between the treatment foster care agencies and CYFD and the [managed care organizations] is practically non-existent,” she said.

Flannery said Presbyterian Healthcare Services and CYFD had started meeting with treatment foster care agencies and said she would confirm with Chavez the dates of those meetings later.

Other requirements in the settlement agreement were ensuring appropriate placements for foster children who must go out of state, serving Native American families, building out an accessible mental health system and developing a trauma-responsive system of care for children in state custody.

There were 2,031 children in state custody as of June 30, according to a CYFD data dashboard.