A Case Study on the Death of a Four-Month-Old Baby Due to Neglect

The incident involves the death of a four-month-old baby due to the neglect by a substance-abusing father. Carl Matthew Stivason of Redding, Shasta County, California, was overseeing his infant daughter and two-year-old son at his home since his wife was at work. However, he overdosed himself with drugs and passed out. He was holding his daughter in his hands even as he consumed increased doses of drugs.

Consequently, he became unconscious, and the baby slipped from his hold, "became lodged facedown between him and the recliner cushion," suffered from suffocation, and died (Espino, 2017). The tragedy was identified when Stivason's wife could not reach her husband through phone and asked their neighbor to check on him and children. The man was arrested under the charge of murder and child neglect. Since the father is at fault, the media covered the incident by focusing on how father's substance abuse and resultant neglect led to the death of an infant.

The underlying reason for the incident is the substance abuse by the father. Since he appears to have consumed high doses of drugs, he became unconscious, and that resulted in physical and psychological neglect. According to Rosenberg and Wilcox (2006), physical and psychological neglect includes incorrect supervising of children and not attending to their basic needs owing to drug and alcohol abuse and thereby resulting in their deaths or injuries. In this scenario, the father was tasked with overseeing the children in the absence of the mother, but he could not do that correctly due to substance abuse.

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Although his four-month- old baby was in his hands and care, Stivason neglected or ignored his responsibility. Furthermore, with his son being a two-year-old without awareness, he should have cared the infant as well as supervised the boy and should not have touched the drugs. However, he not only abused the drugs but overdosed them and caused his daughter's death.

When working with substance-abusing fathers as well as mothers who might be affected by those fathers, social workers can apply the NASW Code of Ethics, claiming that "social workers' primary goal is to help people in need and to address social problems...by drawing their knowledge, values, and skills"; therefore, they have to assist fathers and mothers (NASW, 1996).

Although father in the above situation is a culprit, he also should be counseled. However, the mother and children should be the main focus. In this scenario, the mother would be the most distressed. She trusted her husband to take care of their infant and went to work to support their family but suffered a major loss. Therefore, to alleviate her grief and depression, in line with the NASW code, social workers should seek to lessen her sufferings through kind and assuring words by providing her emotional support and enhancing her "capacity to address their own needs" (NASW, 1996).

Yes, social workers are actively responding to such situations by mainly focusing on the affected individuals. In the current situation, the mother and the two-year-old boy are the disturbed ones. As above-mentioned, the mother should be continuously counseled and facilitated to return to normal living as soon as possible. As far as the boy is concerned, since he is two-year-old, he might not be intensely affected by the incident. Nevertheless, he also should be cared along with the mother.

At the same time, it would be difficult to actively respond to the father since he is the accused. Even the above-mentioned NASW Code states that social workers' responsibility to the larger society and ethical good can supersede the loyalty owed to their clients (NASW, 1996). Therefore, though social workers can provide him support, if he is convicted, different assistance has to be provided in prison.

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