How OFRA Works

The Office of Family Representation and Advocacy provides high quality legal representation and advocacy for New Mexico families in the child abuse and neglect system. As funding allows, the Office will provide Interdisciplinary Legal Teams (a lawyer, a social worker, and a peer navigator) to advocate and help children and families successfully access the resources, services, and concrete supports they need to stay together safely whenever possible.

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OFRA is seeking a new Executive Director

From our Director, Beth Gillia, JD, MA

I’m so very pleased to share our Annual Report from SFY25.  I encourage you to read the whole report, but I’ll highlight the punchline here:

Children in Bernalillo County whose parent received an OFRA interdisciplinary legal team experienced a

63.5% reduction in median time to permanency

(via reunification, guardianship, or adoption) compared to those who did not.

On average, these children spent 147 fewer days in foster care.

This kind of impact is exactly why OFRA was created.  With increased funding, we’ll be able to spread this big win to all families!

2025 Annual Report
Leadership Team

The Power of IDS

As part of our FY25 Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) efforts, we participated in a qualitative evaluation with the UNM Evaluation Lab, began collecting important performance data, and had an experienced contractor observe our attorneys in various kinds of court hearings in three counties.  The observations are ongoing, and we’re adding case file reviews to our CQI efforts this year.
The results are not surprising:  Interdisciplinary Legal Teams work!  The teams genuinely support families, provide valuable (and otherwise missing) information for better decision-making by everyone involved, and reduce the time to permanency.

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