My husband is giving up on our 7 year old daughter.

[daddywoe]

We have 3 children and our middle one is autistic and has ADHD.
Dh is stressed and struggling with her and today he told me he doesn’t love her.
He has always been such a hands on dad and we’ve always said how we need to be a team and get through the tough times together but he doesn’t care anymore, she tells him she hates him and doesn’t want to talk to him and he just said fine, I’m done with her.
I can see that he means it, he doesn’t care anymore and I think he’s ready to give up and walk away.
I feel helpless, I need him because I’m struggling too.

So what would they do? I'm asking . If the parent refuses to have the chid then something would have to happen. Instead of answering that question you are repeating about lack of provision. We all know that's an issue but in the scenario I statef something would need to be done

Tbh @RubySquid you are BVU to dismiss the bond between a parent and child as if it can just be ‘put into a placement’ and forgotten about.

And any sort of insistence that the child is removed would not mean that the family could continue seamlessly with no interruptions, nothing to see here.

The first thing would be extensive SS intervention and monitoring. If you refuse to parent one child it naturally calls into consideration your bond and fitness to parent the others. Huge pressure would be put on you to have the child back; it would not be an arrangement with any sort of permanency.

@Southshore18 given you can’t answer me with courtesy it does rather call into question what you consider to be ‘hate speech.’ There was none in the post I saw that I can recall but as you curtly said I appear to have had a ‘memory lapse.’

They would put a lot of pressure on the parents to pick them up and the parents would also be threatened with a charge of child abandonment. Not many parents would hold out against that.

There really are no ‘placements’ handily available for ND children and young people. My DD1 is finally at a residential college, but we’ve had to go through a very long process to get her there. And it isn’t residential yet, it’s a day placement moving towards a residential placement in due course.

I don't know what they'd do but I do know that there are an overwhelming amount of children held in hospitals on sections or likewise for long term or very long term without receiving actual therapeutic treatment.

Heck there are lots of adults who are ND who are also held in hospital long term and very long term (years) without any therapeutic treatment. It's a significant cause of trauma and exacerbates comorbid conditions like eating disorders and mental illness, further exacerbating dysregulation and impulsive behaviours, even self harm and suicide attempts.

A lot of these children and adults are awaiting social care and placements in some sort of foster placement or supported living, taking up beds and spaces that people who could benefit from therapeutic inpatient treatment need or are simply being turned away.

Parents of ND children aren't exempt from child abandonment rules either, so police would definitely be involved.

Police involvement wouldn't magically create a placement in a supported living or care facility.

I think what you are missing here is that the parent isn't wanting to offload their child as if that child is a problem, what the parent wants is for the child to be able to access resources to meet the child's additional needs, leaving the child at a hospital doesn't do that, it just leaves the child more open to further problems.

You need to parent separately. He lives somewhere else cheap, pays you maintenance. It's shit but his state of mind is not safe for her. He needs to recover from whatever it is, burnout, mental health, whatever this blocked care thing is pp have mentioned. (Off to Google next because I've not heard of it but betting I will recognise it)
He needs to ease your burden in ways he can manage that do not involve caring for her.

Parenting autistic/ADHD/ODD kids is relentless hard work. On top of full time long hours work and not sleeping it is no wonder he is struggling. Support from the state is shit or non existent. School can make things worse rather than better. (Experience of both) It is very easy to get to breaking point. He needs help. Your daughter needs protecting, you are going to need a shit load of support.

The thing is, the system pushes you to the bloody limit, ehcps, tribunals, inappropriate schooling, teachers with little to no training in special needs, (gone on for years so senior management haven't a clue either) benefits are often refused by default despite the masses of evidence. The culture of parent blaming for kids, especially ADHD etc are seen as poor parenting for years, unless you are very lucky (and white middle class, married, neuro typical, none disabled) The lack of funding in services doesn't help. Overworked people lose the ability to give a shit. Schools don't follow the law.

Children under the age of fifteen are not supposed to be put in these placements, but realistically it does happen where there’s no alternatives. Those who haven’t been involved with families who are trying to cope with these types of disabilities have no idea how little resource there is in many areas, and how difficult support is to access.

Please don’t advise someone that the way forward with this kind of situation is to parent alone. The father wouldn’t be considered a threat to the child for this kind of comment unless there were other behaviours to support that. The risk assessment is factual, objective and free of the emotion so evident here. The main aim of the authorities and agencies involved with families who have reached the kinds of crisis points OP is clearly experiencing, it to keep the family together wherever possible. Where families split the inevitable result in many cases is that one parent is left with the caring duties and the child often ends up in care when they can no longer cope.

This. So many posters commenting with absolutely no idea of what families like this are facing and how hard support services are to access.

There are parents all over the country in the same situation. You seem to think a placement outside the home is some sort of magic solution that can just be conjured up, when the reality is that it’s horribly difficult to find placements for children with severe behavioural problems, and many are passed from pillar to post once in the system when their behaviour becomes too much and affects others in the placement facility. The fact is, some parents are left to get on with it in conditions that some here would find unimaginable, and abandoning your child is not an option.

So I see But it will lead to people wanting to off load problem kids if they don't get support. As as I pointed out earlier a family member refused to take her newborn home from hospital. SS didn't remove the other 3 kids from her and she was never forced to take the baby back

You win the thread for the most ridiculous comment. This is a family in crisis. Put your dislike of men to one side and actually read what OP is saying. To suggest that he’s using a disabled child as an excuse for having an affair is disgusting in the extreme.

Refusing to take your newborn home is not the same as abandoning children you already have because you can’t cope with the disability.

It’s not a crime to give a baby up for adoption. My youngest DNephew was given up for adoption by his birth mum, because she was a single mum with older children with additional needs. (He was adopted by my DSis and DBIL.)

But you can be charged with child abandonment for dumping existing children years later in the SS office or a hospital.

I don't get why it's ok to refuse to take a newborn home simply because it's thewrong sex yet be expected to keep a child with disabilities you can't cope with.

It’s not.

It's really not, I'm surprised your "friend" didn't have a visit from social services to protect her other children from someone who puts themselves before a newborn or their other DC.
How did "friend" explain the situation to the other DC?
Sounds like a porky lie.

Yeah, I don’t believe that happened, sorry.

It is possible someone had a severe case of post natal depression triggered by a baby not being the sex they expected / wanted but there is no way someone just said ‘I’m leaving this baby here, someone else can have him / her; bye.’ No way.

It was a close relative of mine actually not a " friend " in quotation marks. And yeah she did get visits from SS but they didn't take the other kids away. She still has the other 3

So why would it be a lie. The child's father took it in the end and brought her up but the mother was not forced to keep the kid.

And if there is no way of looking after all these kids with issues why would SS be taking 3 loved and cared for ones out of an immaculate home who are being well cared for to have to deal with them

It's still not ok even if it's a relative that's done it.

Social services probably just decided it was no different than a family splitting up and deciding custody if the father decided to step up and take care of the child.

This isn't comparable to abandoning a disabled child as you're suggesting be done.

Plenty of abusive unloving parents keep an immaculate home, tidy DC, it places a shield over abuse.

Her older kids were not abused They were loved and cared for . Don't know why you are even suggesting she's abusing her kids. I know these kids They are verywell brought up.

Anyway, the bottom line is that giving up a baby for adoption has never been a crime, whatever the reasons, although obviously very much frowned upon these days. Whereas abandoning a disabled child in the SS office or at a hospital very much is, it’s child abandonment.

In those circumstances, there absolutely would be an SS investigation into the welfare of all the children in the family.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have the utmost empathy with families with disabled children who are being pushed to breaking point. I’ve been there. Our family has been torn apart by DD1’s behaviour and additional needs.

Our relationship with DD2 (13) has been completely destroyed, and she’s now living with my DSis and her family, because from her POV we didn’t keep her safe from DD1. Now that she’s away from here, she’s saying that she was always very afraid of her.

So I very much agree that families of disabled children are left very isolated. But what’s needed is more support from the various agencies so they’re not pushed to breaking point. Things would very likely have been very different for our family if we’d had the necessary support.