What is likely to happen with child contact where there is concealed cocaine use?

[ThisQuickOliveCat]

I’ve recently separated from my child’s father and have discovered messages which appear to show repeated cocaine use/planning over roughly the last three years, including while I was pregnant and continuing up until last month.
I don’t have evidence that he was using cocaine while actually caring for our child, but some of the messages suggest he was deliberately arranging to use it when me and our child were away. There are also messages about using it in our family home, including references to preparing it on a plate and putting the plate in the microwave.
There are also separate recent messages showing an intention to smoke cannabis.
I have now raised a safeguarding concern with nursery. They have had to inform social services. Nursery have explained that because he still has parental responsibility they cannot simply stop him collecting our child, although they can contact me if he attempts to do so.
Because of this, I currently don’t feel able to send my child into nursery while I’m trying to get urgent legal advice, as I’m worried he could collect him.
I have spoken to a solicitor / am seeking urgent legal advice about what I should do next.
I’m not looking to stop my child having a relationship with his father unnecessarily, but I am extremely concerned about the concealed drug use and the fact it appears to have gone on for such a long period without my knowledge.
For anyone who has experience of family court or similar circumstances, what is realistically likely to happen with contact?
Would a court be likely to order things such as drug testing, supervised contact or daytime-only contact initially, or is it more likely that normal unsupervised/overnight contact would continue unless there is evidence he used while actually looking after the child?
I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone who has been through something similar.

My late dp had to go through a year of supervised contact due to alcohol issues. He first had 3 months at a Sure start centre seeing them for 90 minutes a week & then moved on to a contact centre for 2 hours a week before the contact included his parents out in the community, either in a park or in a soft play type place still supervised. He was breath tested at every session to prove he hadn't been drinking & before contact started he had to have blood & hair sample testing for drink & drugs. From us first going to court to being able to have unsupervised contact took a year & going back to court every 3 months.

Highly unlikely you'll get anything like supervised contact or drug testing for cocaine use when not having a child in his care and intention to smoke cannabis. There has to be real evidence of a significant drug problem for that sort of intervention and that's not what you have described. Sorry to say that hundreds of thousands of parents each year will be using illegal drugs and also concurrently being parents without any state intervention.

Social services should help with implementating safe contact.

Not for what OP has described. Do you think they get involved with every family where one parents uses cocaine or cannabis? Especially where there is no evidence they are using it while looking after the children?

There is nothing here to suggest contact is unsafe currently.

Please explain how you think social services work

OP you’re on very shaky ground here and really reaching for some gotcha to trip up your ex. Trying to get back at your ex this way can backfire horribly and you can end up losing access to your kids. You shouldn’t be airing your dirty laundry to the nursery or putting them in the middle by telling them not to give your ex the kids. That’s a massive overstep on your part, only a court can take away access to kids, not a disgruntled ex. It’s also very rare in my experience for someone who recreationally uses drugs to end up in a relationship and having kids with someone who is apparently so against them as to be “very concerned” about child safety when drugs are used recreationally away from the kids. Which leads me to think you knew and had no issues with this until you could use it against him.

This will be seen as occasional recreational drug use. For better or worse, many people engage in this and still parent in a way social services would deem safe. The bar is much higher than this for them getting involved, particularly if there’s no evidence of it happening in the presence of a child.

SS leave children in the care of heroin addicts
Bit of coke and weed not a hope in hell unfortunately .

I have 3 years worth of evidence of him organising his benders repeatedly confirming if she ever found out she’d leave me - and how he would hide it and disguise it so I can confirm I had no knowledge and I am not doing this out of spite as it was a really applicable split with 50/50 custody arranged. I’m concerned that he now has a pattern of repeated lying and concealing drug use - how am I supposed to trust someone to co-parent unsupervised when I am unsure if they have been using their dinner plates to cook cocaine, the same plates my son uses to eat? How is this not a safeguarding issue???

Legally they will do very little on the basis that he has racked up lines on plates in the household. Previous posters aren't saying it's a good thing, they're being realistic about what action authorities will take.
The drugs can't be altering his ability to care for the child that much if you noticed nothing for 3 years?

So he is cooking crack? I would say that is a safeguarding issue.

My ex h was actually giving my 12 and 14 year old alcohol and cannabis and I had proof of this and reported it to the police and ss. Took 2.5 years to go through court, he was on bail the whole time with zero restrictions on contact. Don’t hold your breath.

Using dinner plates to cook cocaine??
What are you talking about?
If he was using cocaine for 3 years without you knowing then he is able to manage his use and not expose the child to it. Is it healthy and positive behaviour? No. Is it a risk to the child? No. You had an amicable 50/50 split but you can't discuss this with him like adults, instead you're forcing him to go to court? This is a mistake. You're expecting the court system to adjudicate between you when you should be communicating like adults.

He’s not cooking crack. They heat the plate up before they put the cocaine on it and snort it. It takes the moisture out of the powder and makes it easier to cut up and snort.

Putting cocaine on a hot/warm plate is to make it easier to crush and rack up lines to snort. It's not cooking crack.

In answer to your question, I suspect very little. Unless there is evidence of harm/danger etc to the child, I can’t see SS or the authorities doing anything. Parents up and down the country use drugs, or drink, recreationally and no one has the time to look into every case. Far better you discuss this between you like adults. Is he a good dad generally? Is your child happy and thriving? Does he support them financially, see them regularly etc? What he does in his own time is his business.

I understand your concerns but I really cannot see social work doing all that much about this. As another poster has pointed out, social work do indeed leave children with parents who are active heroin users. He hasn't been using with the child there and his parenting clearly has not been outwardly impaired or it would have been noticed long before now. I highly doubt that social work would even have the time to read all of the text messages you have found... a solicitor tends to only select certain texts to submit to court. Social work are extremely stretched - more so than ever. I would be very cautious incase your ex ends up claiming anything about you as I cannot see him reacting positively to the nursery situation and you having contacted social work. He could easily claim he did not send any of the messages. You could also be accused of deliberately preventing contact by not putting your child to nursery. You need to be very careful.

Do you honestly not understand how many people with children are doing party drugs in this manner every second weekend? If social services were treating every issue like this as a safeguarding issue they’d have to quadruple their workforce. I’m not saying it’s OK or sensible, I’m just saying it’s exceedingly common. Your ex would have washed his plates, there’s no safeguarding issue there. It’s possible he even has a dedicated plate for this purpose.

Meant to add, social work would also start an assessment of your parenting if they somehow did decide that this needed to be investigated. They don't just look at the one parent. It can be terribly invasive. They also do not rush into demanding drug testing of these types of cases.

I know countless parents who take recreational drugs like this when they don’t have their children and are wonderful parents. People also wash the plate after. YABU.

I agree with the other posters. Recreational use of drugs is stupid and dangerous, but if he's not doing it whilst the child is in his care and he's not under the influence of anything whilst seeing the child it's a non-issue.

I also think the fact he's been doing it when you and the child weren't around shows he doesn't want to expose his child to it.

I'd have a conversation with him about it. I'd want to know what he does with his stash and ensure that it's kept somewhere locked and out of the way when he has the child.

Stopping your child's contact with their father is likely to be more damaging to your child than the father taking drugs in his own time/whilst not caring for his child is.

Sorry op - you are about to have an education in state intervention. Their bar is “good enough” - yours is “ I want the absolute best for my child “. There is a massive gap between these. It’s very hard but all you can do is give your child the better life when with you.
my children have court awarded over night contact with a man who has been arrested/ detained under the MHA and a daily drug user. I work in services so knew he would get it. I did go through the courts to make sure he got the absolute minimum but always knew he would get contact.

it’s hard op.

Hi there,
you will be accused of using this recreational habit which only happens without the child present as an excuse to sever the child parent bond because you are jealous or bitter of have mental health problems with anxiety. So you’ll need to counter that.

also, you should be offering supervised contact, your child loves dad and will be confused why she isn’t seeing him.

why don’t you go to mediation and try to establish some ground rules?

Using dinner plates to cook cocaine? Do you mean to cut it? It would wash off with water it’s not arsenic where a tiny drop would poison him. I get you’re shocked but you are really amplifying risks. The main risk I would see is a packet being left open and him finding it in dads pocket or wallet - talk to him in mediation about a safety plan for mitigating this risk.