Feel like social services are ruining my life

[Mor08102002]

My OH, sufferes with MH and is an alcoholic. He has been waiting along time for help with MH, back in dec he attempted to commit suicide. Our children were NOT in the house when it happened.

SS have stated that when my OH is released from hospital he is not allowed home to the family home as they deem him a “fire risk” he is now scared of petrol/fire so he is not a risk anymore.

Got a child protection case conference coming up, and I’m scared. Scared they going to split my family up. SW has been 0 support during this. I have asked for a new one repeatedly as I don’t trust him to have my children’s best interest at heart.

He did a section 47 on my children, he not even explained what a 47 is or how it applies to my children as my children are not at risk from abuse/neglect/emotional or physical abuse

His focus is on your children's safety, yours is on your husband. I'm with the social worker, safety comes before anything else.

And he needs to continue to do so. For a much longer period.

If you are so convinced that this time is the time he will stop drinking and get well, then there’s no issue having extra safeguards in place while he does this

You and your Oh are ruining your life.
Hopefully the intervention of social workers will prevent the same thing happening to your children.

Please prioritise your children.

Never have I known a severe and suicidal alcoholic get better the first time they tried.

He's at a huge risk of relapse and I don't think that's something your children should be made to around.

@Mor08102002 I think you have to choose between your partner or your children at this point in time

I’m sorry OP because I know that it is a difficult situation for you to be in the middle of as he is your partner, but social services are completely correct here. He should absolutely not be back living with children while seeking the help that he so desperately needs.

Social services only concern and priority is your children. For you, you also are balancing the needs of your partner and that is understandable but it does mean you have competing priorities to cope with and are maybe not seeing things clearly.

This is a man who has just set himself on fire- he is not at all safe to be around children.

And he has to demonstrate this. Until they trust that he won't relapse.

He can't just say "oh I know this, I'm never going to do it again".

He has to keep engaging.

They've seen this all before and know the likelihood of relapse when back in the community and the family home.

So he has to prove he can cope WITHOUT you and the children first.

Words are cheap at this stage. This is all about stages.

He isn't in a place where they feel confident he is ok because he is still in the early stages of recovery.

The pressures and temptations of every day life as they step back from supporting him are an important in this.

The fact you are in denial that he's a risk, will definitely be part of their assessment too because they are judging you to not be prioritising the kids.

Think about this. Hard.

He is not the centre of the universe. Your kids should be.

This is all good but he must prove himself to be safe, sober and stable for an extended period of time before he should be living back with your children.
A relapse in his drinking and mental health is extremely likely once he has been released.
You don’t want to here this clearly but he is a risk to your children and you.

This is excellent OP. He needs to keep doing this.
At the moment it too soon to say that he is going to be safe around the dc but over time he will be able to demonstrate this.
He does need to be able to demonstrate the ability to manage his alcohol misuse and mental health in the outside world for a reasonable period of time before he gets too tangled up with the dc's lives.

I absolutely agree - been there 😐

It's good that he's engaging with services which will aid his recovery.

Recovery from addiction is a long, slow process. Your partner may know that he must never drink again, but sticking to that is extremely difficult.

Let him live somewhere else, where he gets help and support with his poor mental health, and concentrate on your children yourself.

I agree with this, the children need to be safeguarded and come first which is probably why social work have got involved in the first place. There’s no way I’d be having my husband home if he’d tried to set himself on fire and was an alcoholic. He’ll need to prove to social work he’s not a risk to them and that won’t happen in a few months. You’ll also need to prove you’re a responsible parent to social work.

Edited to add apologies I’ve cross posted with a lot of others

How old are your children, OP?

Being abstinent in a protected environment in a hospital is easy. In the real world not so much

Sadly most people in your DH position relapse a number of times. He needs to live apart, have supervised contact only and show that he can remain 100% sober for many months before he can come back. In the interim you may realise life is better without him...

The other thing is that drug and alcohol services are self referral. So whilst he was 'waiting to get the help he needs' he could have been calling up those services and engaging with them. The fact that you and he don't seem to think he has any responsibility for his actions does not bode well for long term recovery.

Setting yourself on fire whilst your partner is in the house is an aggressive as well as a self destructive act. He had, at the least, no thought for the impact on you and the family. At the worst he may have done it in anger at you. Why do you want to stay with this man? If you want to rescue him that's a bad reason

Yep! Completely this..poor children.

How many times was he violent towards you @Mor08102002?

Op seeing you op set himself on fire will have been extremely traumatic for you . He was not thinking straight . The children easily could have been home . It was luck you were and the children weren’t .

You have been living with an alcoholic who is seriously depressed .

whilst it is great he is engaging with services . He has a very long road ahead . Knowing he can never drink again and not is a completely different ball game. Alcoholics know long before it gets to this level they shouldn’t drink .

You children have been subjected to living in this situation . Read up on living with an alcoholic ,

you need to make it clear to the hospital coming home isn’t an option so they can look at suitable placements for him .

Dp is the one ruining your life . Ss are the ones prioritising your dc . You can’t see this which means you are unable to safeguard your dc .

My ex took an OD when my Ds was a few weeks old . I had gone to have a nap .

i did have services involved - however I made it clear he would not ever be unsupervised and had services supporting me . I was bloody furious with now ex .

You need to find your anger at your dp too . He has put your family in danger by his behaviour not Ss.

one less thing to point out setting fire to yourself is a very serious attempt on life . A minute later you would have had no chance of putting him out .

You have a lot to understand and come to terms with

Hi op . I hope that your OK as you can be. Working with social services can be very hard. It can feel like you have no control over anything. They have alot of control and it can be extremely worrying that they might consider taking the children. That is very unlikely to happen if you work with them. That may mean doing some things you don't want to. But you have to work on things one step at a time .

I get you feel they are splitting your family. But they are not at least not long term as long as everything gos how it should do. You and your children need to live alone from your partner for now. We are talking months not weeks. Whilst this is happening your partner needs to work on himself. Work with all the support he's being offered and that's in place for him. I get that's already started? But it needs to be in place for a while before it can be considered that he's ready to move forward. Once he is more stable it could be a possibility he could come home . But firstly he needs to do alot of work.

Hopefully you will eventually get your partner home . But not for now.

OP I agree with others who think that you are likely going to have to choose between your partner and your children. Please don't be one of those women.

I have to ask - is your partner putting pressure on you, trying to persuade you to let him come home? Regardless of what SS think?

Alcoholism is a disease of denial. Sometimes this transferred to the person living with althe alcoholic.

You should go to al anon and talk to other people who live with alcoholics. You may come to see that engaging with MH of a couple of months "knowing " they can never drink again is a long way from recovery. He's got no choice at the moment -he's in hospital.

SW will only break up families of the children are in very serious emotional and physical danger.

Your children are.

From him and you - because you are in denial about how serious this is.

That you are refusing to engage and your answer is to change social worker because you don't want to face the truth is putting your family at more risk of being broken up.

That's what you need to see. Your minimising of the situation will be a massive red flag to them.

Your family is broken up. That's the fact.

Your partner is too dangerous to have near the children.

If you carry on as your are sw may come to the conclusion that you are too.

@Mor08102002 I can imagine reading all of these responses has been hard.

You've been through an awful lot, probably long before he set himself on fire.

Please do accept the help you've been offered with trying to get over his recent suicide attempt. It will help you see the situation more objectively and hopefully see how your future might be different than the one you'd planned. That's ok though, because I'm pretty sure you didn't plan your life being how it is now.

I would get in touch with whoever offered you the Counselling and say that you've changed your mind. You do need the support.

I'd also tell the SW that you've requested Counselling.

A few people have mentioned Al Anonn. There is also Bottled Upp. Please do reach out and get the support they offer.

You haven't said how old your DC are. If they're in or enough for phones/SM you might want to tell them about Nacao.

Somebody has already mentioned telling the Hospital that you cannot have your DH living with you whilst he recovers. This is really good advice. I'd make sure that the Discharge Clerk on the ward is very clear on this and also your SW.

Are you worried about what your DH's reaction will be if he realises that you are prioritising your DC over him?

OP, I sympathise. This must be incredibly difficult for you. Do you have friends/family who are helping or offering support?

But I must say that from an outsider, it seems that SS are keeping the DC's interests as their primary focus.

They've an alcoholic father
The father suffers from poor mental health
Less than 4 months ago, their father attempted suicide in a most horrific and attention seeking way
Father has been in hospital ever since.
Their mother refuses mental health support
Their mother wants the father to return to the family home on discharge from hospital.

Please listen to and engage with social services. They would be negligent if they were to allow your DP to return to living with you.

i don’t need mental health support for myself. I have dealt with and processed everything. I had to learn when I was younger how to do to that as I witnessed a traumatic event when I was 15.. everyone else who was involved in that event got help, I didn’t. I was neglected so I leant how to deal with everything. And when I did decide to try counselling they put me in a group setting…. The same group setting as my mother and a big no no and not allowed to respect everyone’s right to privacy. So as you can imagine. For me I don’t need mental health but I do not have experience in the field that my OH needs help with which is why I have been fighting for years to get him help with the community mental health team. They were meant to come out to the house to see him but they kept sending him appointments to go to their office knowing I could t get in to the city centre. (As well as MH he has social anxiety)

He knows he can’t come home. Don’t get me wrong he is deeply upset that he cannot as he misses out boys. He wasn’t even allowed to see our youngest when he was in hospital having an NG feeding tube fitted and he wasn’t allowed to see him on his birthday 2 weeks ago.
I am trying to get him a social worker to help us get him a place to live that’s not too far away that I can continue to support him while the children are in school.
i have followed all the rules the SW has given me out of fear.
and it was the SW who has said OH is not allowed home and this was before any meetings/therapy etc he made his mind out before giving people a chance to prove themselves