Scenario
Kole Lawrence, a 3-year-old child, and an older sibling were seriously injured by one of their parents, who has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. The father had threatened the life of his children and their mother on several occasions, including filling a bathtub with gasoline to kill his whole family. Even though this was a serious situation, the state prosecutors refused to file criminal charges following this incident. Protective custody by the Department of Human Services (DHS) was taken of the children because the parents were unable to protect their children.
Mr. James Lawrence, the father of Kole, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He had multiple psychiatric hospitalizations following other threatening incidents and was prescribed medications and aftercare services. Despite these facts, the court granted him supervised visitation with his children.
Kole’s mother admitted to being afraid of Mr. Lawrence, her fiancé, and was indicated for neglect due to her inability to protect her children. Even though this was a high-risk case, DHS failed to follow up to see if the father was attending all services and taking his medications.
The children were placed with a maternal aunt who did not follow the requirement for supervised visitations. She allowed the mother to take the children to school and pick them up. On a few occasions, she allowed the children to spend the night at the paternal grandmother’s home even though the father was living there. It was during one of these incidents that the father set fire to the home, almost killing the children’s mother. She is in denial and believes it was an accident, although she is still afraid of Mr. Lawrence. Kole Lawrence was in a coma for 20 days but is expected to recover. Mr. Lawrence managed to escape unharmed. The older sibling survived with burns on 35% of his body.
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- hat information can you gather based on this family’s history?
- Information Analysis
- Analyze the family’s history and this most recent incident.
- Draw Conclusion
- What are your immediate concerns?
- What assessment tools would you use to draw these conclusions?
- Examples include mental health assessment, substance abuse assessment, safety assessment to assess the safety of the children, etc.
- Make Decision
- Make some decisions for intervention recommendations on what you feel needs to happen with the family or individual members moving forward based on your assessment.
- You can make individual service interventions for each family member, specific family members, or the family as a whole.
- How should DHS proceed with this case?
- What service interventions should be delivered to this family?
- What recommendations would make?
- Make some decisions for intervention recommendations on what you feel needs to happen with the family or individual members moving forward based on your assessment.
