There is, of course, more, but it has taken a while to write and to summarise.
The short story is that my mental health buckled a year of two after my ExH left me, on top of a stillbirth a few years earlier. It manifested itself as hoarding. SS got involved, but, at no time did they ever start any process to remove the Children.
I had gone back to work, as my ExH wasn't paying what he should have in Child Maintenance, having stayed at home with then by mutual agreement. He defaulted on the joint mortgage without notice so I ended up in Court and took it on to provide stability for my Children, but it was all very tight. He chopped and changed contact ... all the time, I was dealing with four Children under 9 when he left. They had 100% attendance at School, were clean and looked-after and three of them are very high achievers educationally, e.g. getting into a Grammar School.
It is really difficult to feel positive about SS when they take 7 months to refer you to specialist hoarding support then, in Court say it didn't deal enough with how the hoarding affected the Children and that it is too short a time to see you have really changed. Anyway, since I have had help with that, and related loss counselling, a trigger, both my mind and my house have been transformed, even under Covid (which has inevitably made disposal of things harder).
The Judge's assessment was the my ExH could provide more stability for them. His role in the pressures I struggled under wasn't commented on at all, nor his "hands-off" approach for over four years as I struggled alone.