New Mexico governor prohibits home discharge for infants born with drug exposures

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday outlined a new directive intended to prevent babies born with exposures to illicit drugs from being discharged to the parents’ home.

Under the new protocol, hospitals are prohibited from discharging substance-exposed infants, Lujan Grisham said.

Instead, the state’s Children Youth and Families Department will take 72-hour custody of infants born with exposures to fentanyl, methamphetamine or with fetal alcohol disorder prior to discharge from a hospital or from a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Hospitals will have to report to the state while the substance-exposed baby remains in the hospital, Lujan Grisham said in a meeting with the Albuquerque Journal editorial board. “They cannot discharge until CYFD assumes temporary custody, or until baby’s out of the NICU and then CYFD temporary custody.”

The changes are intended to prevent a repeat of recent high-profile cases in which infants died in the care of caregivers with substance-abuse problems, she said.

“These families resist treatment and support because they are sick,” she said.

Lujan Grisham also said the state has contracted with a private management company to provide leadership services for CYFD. The firm, Alvarez and Marsal, is a professional services firm known for its work in “turnaround management” and performance improvement.

Under the new protocol, the state will take custody of the infants in collaboration with family courts, she said.

CYFD and a state Department of Health official will perform a safety assessment of the caregivers’ home before the child is discharged home, she said.

“We’ve moved the care of responsibility to the Department of Health, where we’ve got medical experts, health experts, and they’re going with CYFD on every one of those visits,” Lujan Grisham said.

The change breaks with the existing presumption that substance-exposed babies are safe at home with voluntary support services, she said.

The changes were prompted by two recent Albuquerque criminal cases in which infants died, including one child who had been placed with foster parents by CYFD.

In one case, officials missed opportunities to remove a 4-month-old boy born addicted to fentanyl from his home prior to his June 5 death, a prosecutor said during a June 13 detention hearing for the child’s mother. The boy was discharged under a CYFD safety plan to the parents’ home, where the child was found dead. Law enforcement later reported finding found large quantities of illegal drugs in the home.

Prosecutors allege that Gabriella Muniz, 27, and Victor Gonzales, 46, contributed to the boy’s death by using fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine in their home where the boy died. A 2nd Judicial District Court judge ordered both held in custody pending trial.

The other case involved the death of a 10-month-old girl from “abusive head trauma,” Albuquerque police said. The girl’s foster mother, Denise Vazquez-Browley, 39, was charged July 3 with child abuse resulting in the girl’s death.

Since the deaths of the two infants, state officials have identified 149 high-risk cases for review, Lujan Grisham said. The home visits are done by a team that includes a law enforcement officer, a CYFD investigator, and a health care expert, who brief state Cabinet secretaries. Thus far, 10 infants have been removed from their families as part of the review and 13 more have hearings pending to remove them, with the first hearing anticipated later this week or early next in family court.

“We can’t leave a child in a situation where there’s open drug use and other risks associated,” the governor said. “We don’t want to wait another minute before we do something dramatically different...to keep kids safer in the state.”