Court order and change in parent's mental health (possible TW)

[motheroreily]

Hi. I have a court order for 50/50 residency. I had a bad marriage but that's all in the past.
However since about Jan my ex husband has been really suffering with his mental health. He calls me sometimes saying he's worried he can't look after our child (who is 9) and I'll go and collect her.
He took an overdose on one occasion on another he was acting oddly and had a knife as if he was going to hurt himself and last night he took another overdose. Then called our daughter crying and very distressed. Which really upset her.
Our child has never been in house when these incidents have happened. I also don't believe he'd ever hurt her and I know he doesn't even shout at her.
However after the latest incident I'm very worried. I don't think he should see her unless his wife is present and he needs to commit to taking his medication properly and engaging with his mental health team. I don't know whether to contact social services myself or what to do. It feels a bit more complicated as we have this court order.
He is a loving father and I don't want to stop him seeing her. But I'm so worried about the effect on our daughter

Have you raised your concerns and what you want to happen with him yet? I’ve had to have a few safeguarding discussions with stbxh re: his mental health.
Your ex needs to understand the gravity of it and what could happen to access if he isn’t safe to have her. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been around previously.
It’s really hard to have those discussions - my stbxh’s first reaction was that I was trying to take the children from him. It’s taken a lot of ongoing effort. Could you get some advice yourself from relate or similar on how to approach it? Are you able to speak with him constructively?
Maybe at the moment 50/50 isn’t right for him. So sorry for you all

Thank you so much for your reply. In the past he's been very difficult to speak to and quite combatative. But it's got easier and he's been more open since his mental health has got worse. It's odd.

I'm going to try and speak to him today. I've been thinking about it a lot over the weekend.

can you move contact to supervised? park or play centre or somewhere safer?
kids should not be exposed to things like this at that age, I would not stop contact as such but 100% agree with this needs to be supervised

Thank you so much for your reply. I spoke to him today and he agreed the contact needs to be supervised. He's hoping to be admitted to hospital and said he doesn't think he can do contact for a couple of weeks anyway. So I'm going to suggest it's supervised by his wife or sister. I feel a lot better for talking to him today.