Question: The Case Study of Tony: Tony is a 49-year-old Latino male and single father of four.

Read the case study on Tony and answer the following questions. Main themes from student responses will be addressed during the live session; please come prepared to share your thoughts.

What individual and family strengths do you notice?
What do you see as the presenting problem(s)?
What information is missing? What questions do you have of the family in order to better understand their situation?
What cultural factors do you want to be aware of and what potential issues of bias, and/or overidentification, might come up for you? What work will you need to do in order to provide bias-free services to this family from a positive multicultural/social justice/feminist lens?
What questions would you want to ask the family in order to best understand the family's narrative about their current situation?
What does the language they are using tell you about how each may be dealing with this loss?
Would narrative theory be your theory of choice to use with this family? Why or why not?

The Case of Tony

Tony is a 49-year-old Latino male and single father of four. His wife, Maggie, passed away six months ago from a brain tumor that was never detected prior to her death. He has three daughters and one son, Angela (21 years old), little Maggie (16 years old), Maria (12 years old), and Beto (8 years old). Tony, his wife, and Angela are undocumented, while the younger children are documented U.S. citizens. Tony complains of feeling irritable all of the time and can’t seem to “snap out of it.” He becomes tearful when speaking of his wife’s death and changes the subject when she is brought up. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, it happened six months ago so I don’t know why I keep reacting like a child.”

Angela lives three houses down the street from Tony and the other children. Angela is dating a 30-year-old African American male named Marcus, and the two of them have been dating for almost one year. Angela is very open about her feelings regarding her mother’s death and tries really hard to be there for her father in helping him raise the children. Angela often tells her dad, “We all need to grieve dad, I miss mom just like everyone else in this family.” Marcus is a good support for Angela, but Tony has made it clear to Angela that he does not care for Marcus, “because he does not have a job and is being taken care of financially by Angela. What kind of man is that, he’s not good enough for Angela,” states Tony.

Tony works two jobs to support his family. He works days at a nearby school as the groundskeeper, and works evenings at a local restaurant as one of the cooks. Angela and Marcus watch the children after school until Tony gets home, usually around 9 or 10 p.m. at night. Angela works as a paralegal at a local law firm. Tony has had a hard time knowing how to manage the household, seeing as how Maggie was a stay-at-home mom and took care of things at home. “I never realized how much she did for this family; she was our rock and now she’s gone. I don’t know how to do all of this, school, work, day care, I feel like I’m drowning sometimes.” Maggie was the world to every one of the family members. Tony describes her as “the love of my life, my best friend, and a dedicated mother.”

Tony no longer allows the children to talk about their mother or her death, because he feels that it only “makes everyone more depressed. I don’t know what to do when everyone starts crying, we need to move on already,” says Tony. Little Maggie, Maria, and Beto were the ones to find their mother lying on the couch the day she passed away. All three children describe how she looked in detail, “she was gray and purple, she had her eyes closed, and she wasn’t moving.” Little Maggie was the one to call the police that day. All three children witnessed the police and ambulance coming to take their mother away. Tony arrived at the home shortly after they had taken the body to the hospital for the autopsy. He yelled at the hospital staff that night stating, “they should have kept the children from seeing their mother like that.”

Maria seems to have withdrawn from the family and spends most of her time in her room alone, listening to music. She went from an “A” student to a “D” student, which is why Tony is seeking help for her. He does not think it is good for her to be inside all of the time and says that her teachers report that she no longer goes outside during recess and spends most of her time in the nurse’s office with an upset stomach. “The doctors aren’t any help, they keep telling me they can’t find anything physically wrong with her,” he says. “I need her to go to therapy so that they can help her do better in school again. She’s very smart, this does not make sense,” he mentions.