NEW DIGS FOR DISPLACED KIDS
With renovated spaces, children removed from their homes will no longer be stuck in an office
After months of planning, the Albuquerque office of the state Children Youth and Families Department is opening its first kid-friendly intake center so children removed from their families don’t have to spend hours in uncomfortable social worker office chairs or spend the night on the office floor while waiting for placement in a foster home.
“(An office) is not the right setting for them, especially as they are processing trauma,” said Monique Jacobson, department secretary for CYFD.
What is right, she says, is a place where kids can feel cared for, where they can play, have a snack, decompress, or take a nap. And that’s what she says has been created in the PullTogether Receiving Center.
Jacobson and Gov. Susana Martinez toured the center Friday, highlighting commu-
nity donations that combined with about $118,000 of CYFD funding to create the multiroom area inside CYFD’s main Albuquerque office at San Mateo and Central.
CYFD moved some employees out of the rooms to make a space for the facility starting in March, after state legislators denied the department’s requests for money to build a free-standing welcome center to serve the same purpose.
CYFD’s lease on the building is up in 2019. Still, Jacobson said that under Martinez’s direction to fix the issue and knowing that kids were being further traumatized by sitting in sterile, uncomfortable offices at a time of great upheaval and trauma, a solution was necessary.
“We didn’t want to give up on these kids. We pushed (to get it done), even knowing we may move. Because about 900 kids a year” are taken into custody in Bernalillo County, Jacobson said. “In two years, that’s 1,800 kids. What the governor made clear is what we could not do, and that was do nothing.”
So now, children who are taken into custody and aren’t sent straight to a foster home or a relative can go with their social worker to the Receiving Center and play or rest while their caseworker team finds them a place to stay and works on court paperwork.
Jacobson is clear though that this is not a place intended to house children for a long time. New policy written for the center says they can spend no more than 24 hours in the facility.
While there, though, they have the run of the place while their social worker watches and works.
Rooms in the center include a kitchen, outfitted with a donated water filter from a local dentist, a stocked refrigerator from La Montanita Co-op with a promise of steady refills and a basket of snacks. Dion’s restaurant has also donated future pizzas.
“Sometimes, the last meal they had was a free meal at school,” Martinez said.
A full stomach can help them focus on handling the situation better, she said.
The rooms are decorated with wall hangings and special designs, with all design work donated by Dekker/Perich/Sabatini architects in Albuquerque.
A central play area is set up like a kindergarten room, with a low table, a television with donated VHS tapes and DVDs, books that the children can take with them, and toys for younger children.
Older children can take refuge in the game room with video games and wallmounted TV.
There is also a quiet room, painted in calm colors with dim lights where, Jacobson said, children can “decompress” or find stillness. Couches provide a place to take a nap.
Another room is set up for small children who need a nap or are picked up in the middle of the night and need to sleep. It includes a crib for a baby.
“Really, mostly, we wanted them to be super comfortable,” Jacobson said. “That way they’re not sitting (in an office) thinking of where they are getting placed.”