Like a lot of toddlers, Nevaeh Dunscomb loved toting around her blanket and watching Ms. Rachel videos.
Nevaeh also loved to be on the move. She preferred to walk around the house while she ate, and one of her favorite pastimes was crawling up and down the stairs.
“That’s all she wanted to do,” said her godmother, Robin Thomas. “She would get to the top ”] and then come right back down.”
A year ago, Nevaeh died of a fentanyl overdose. She was 2 years old.
Tiffany Carr, Nevaeh’s mother, pleaded guilty last month in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to first-degree child abuse in connection with Nevaeh’s death. She was sentenced to 25 years, with all but 10 suspended.
Some of Nevaeh’s family believe the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services allowed Carr, who has struggled with addiction, to have custody of the toddler too soon after she finished rehab. The family says there should be more structures in place to prevent deaths like Nevaeh’s.
Nevaeh’s paternal aunt, Quanna Tubaya, was given custody of Nevaeh after she was born with drugs in her system on May 2, 2022.
Although Nevaeh’s father, Quantonio Dunscomb, was still in the picture at the time, Tubaya said he didn’t want to be responsible for Nevaeh.
“As an aunt, I stepped up,” Tubaya said.
Dunscomb, who is on house arrest on unrelated charges, did not respond to requests for comment.
Nevaeh remained in her aunt’s care for a little less than half a year while Carr began a drug treatment program for parents. As Carr made progress, she was reunited with Nevaeh.
When Carr completed the program and agreed to outpatient treatment, the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services allowed Nevaeh to stay in Carr’s care.
“Tiffany wanted her,” Tubaya said. “And I was cool with that. … I always supported Tiffany in that.”
Judy Sorrell, Nevaeh’s paternal great-aunt, said that at first, things seemed to be going well. Carr would bring Nevaeh over to visit her dad’s family regularly.
But after a few months, Carr started sending someone else to drop off Nevaeh, Sorrell said.
At first, they thought it was just because Carr was busy. But when Carr came to drop off Nevaeh at Tubaya’s one day, they noticed she was nodding off as if she was on drugs, Sorrell said.
There were also signs Nevaeh wasn’t being properly cared for. The family said that when Nevaeh would visit, she would be in dirty clothing.
“We just kind of figured out something was going on,” Sorrell said.
Eventually, Carr became distant and the family said they started seeing less and less of Nevaeh.
The first time Tubaya shared a concern about Carr with Nevaeh’s caseworker, the caseworker said she would put it on file, Tubaya said. But when Carr stopped responding to Tubaya, the caseworker told her there wasn’t anything she could do to help because Tubaya was no longer Nevaeh’s guardian.
Tubaya said she believes Nevaeh’s caseworker did what she could and that the problem lies with the system.
A family’s worst nightmare
It was the middle of the night when Tubaya learned her niece was dead.
“My brother comes to me in the middle of the night and says, ‘She’s gone,’” Tubaya said.
At first, Tubaya didn’t know what her brother, Nevaeh’s father, was talking about.
“And he said, ‘Nevaeh’s gone.’ At that moment, I couldn’t feel nothing,” Tubaya said.
At the time of her death, Nevaeh’s case with the Department of Social Services had been closed for a little over a year.
According to court documents, on Aug. 17, 2024, first responders arrived at Carr’s apartment in Glen Burnie and found Nevaeh lying face down on a futon. She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead an hour later.
Police said Carr had taken drugs earlier that day and been fading in and out for most of the afternoon. According to court documents, Carr told detectives that when she woke up to take another hit of drugs, she saw Navaeh fall from the futon to the floor.
When Carr realized her daughter was unresponsive, she administered two doses of Narcan and called for help, police said.
Nevaeh’s paternal great-grandmother, Hazel Coates, said that after Nevaeh’s death, the ambulance driver who took Nevaeh to the hospital told her the incident was the “worst situation” he had seen.
Bethany Skopp, the public defender who represented Carr, declined to comment. Carr is incarcerated at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. She is expected to be released in 2035.
What could have been
Nevaeh’s paternal family believes the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services should have a lengthier reunification process between parents struggling with addiction and their children.
Sorrell said she doesn’t understand why the agency allowed Nevaeh to be placed in Carr’s custody “so soon” after Carr finished rehab.
“I think the system failed [Nevaeh],” she said, later adding that there should be a year before parents with addiction problems take back custody of their children.
According to court records, Carr was charged with possessing drugs about five months before Nevaeh’s death. Tubaya doesn’t understand why Nevaeh remained in Carr’s custody after she received the charge.
The Maryland Department of Human Services — which oversees Baltimore City and each county’s Department of Social Services — declined to comment on the record about the specifics of Nevaeh’s case, and what, if any, changes would be made in the wake of her death.
In a statement, the department said every child in Maryland deserves a “safe and supportive home.”
“A child fatality is a tragedy, and our hearts break for Nevaeh,” they said.
University of Maryland School of Social Work Distinguished Professor Richard P. Barth said that if a parent is charged with a drug offense, police are supposed to notify social services so that a caseworker can meet with the family and assess the situation.
Justin Mulcahy, a spokesperson for the Anne Arundel County Police Department, said the drug charge Carr received was the result of a follow-up investigation on a traffic stop. He said that looking back at police records, it seemed that Carr was alone in the vehicle and so the department probably would not have gotten social services involved.
Barth said that when a social worker is tipped off that a parent in a case might be using drugs again, the social worker is supposed to go check in on the family and determine whether any intervention is needed.
Nevaeh’s family doesn’t believe these steps were taken by the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services when it became clear Carr was using drugs again.
According to the website for the Maryland Department of Human Services, health care providers must report substance-exposed newborns, like Nevaeh, to their social services department.
Across the state, when a substance-exposed newborn has been reported, a comprehensive assessment is done to determine the family’s strengths and needs. This allows the agency to create a “Plan of Safe Care,” which varies by circumstances.
The local social services agency “will continue to monitor safety and service needs of the newborn, family and caregivers, throughout the life of the case with the agency,” the website states.
The Department of Human Services says the program is meant to decrease the number of substance-exposed newborns put in foster care and increase access to resources for families.
Barth said there are “quite a few” cases not only in Maryland, but across the country, where children and parents who struggle with addiction were reunified too soon “and lives were cut short.” He said the issue of children dying from fentanyl who have had a case with a local welfare agency and been left in the home is a nationwide issue.
Barth pointed out that the country is facing a growing number of fatalities in child welfare. According to the most recent report published this year by the U.S. Children’s Bureau, a national estimate of 2,000 children in the U.S. died from abuse and neglect in the federal fiscal year 2023. This is 9.6% higher than 2019’s 1,825 fatalities. In 2022, there were 2,050 fatalities, according to the report.
Eighty-three child fatalities were reported in Maryland in 2023, compared with 68 in 2022 and 55 in 2019, according to the report.
Barth said welfare agencies should be more careful about allowing children to stay at home with their parents in situations like Nevaeh’s.
“Because now their safety is increasingly compromised,” he said.
Barth said there also needs to be a focus on workforce size and the number of cases a child welfare professional is given at one time. He said that having enough of these professionals is important so that they can “successfully implement” a child welfare agency’s procedures in these kinds of situations.
Sorrell said the system has to get better for other children out there whose parents are struggling with drug addiction.
“You don’t know until you see a baby lying there in that casket,” she said.
Have a news tip? Contact Maggie Trovato at mtrovato@baltsun.com, 443-890-0601 or on X @MaggieTrovato.
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