What to do Once the Elephant is Seen

Dealing with your own metal illness is a challenge, but dealing with someone else is even harder, especially when it is severe and it affects your child. What if to make things even MORE complicated you are no longer involved with the metally ill person? Where do the rights of the sick person end and the rights of the child begin? This is a question mental rights and family advocates, child services, and Chuck and I try to negotiate regularly. Over the last week it is a question that seems to have taken over or lives. We have know that Chuck's ex has several major mental health diagnosises, and we have had increasing concern for his daughter and the way they live. However, we believed his ex was being treated and getting help fr om the state in dealiing with their daughter. So we felt there was a safety net in place for them both. This week learned things have taken a major turn for the worse. We wonder what is best for everyone involved. Is someone with as severe a mental illness able to take care of a child? How much damage has been done already and how do you help a young child overcome something so dramatic as dealing with a sick parent? Can you explain to a mother who has little concept of the world outside her own deeply confused mind what danger she might be putting her child in? What is the affect of introducing a child who has been in such an unstable enviornment have on an already established family that has other children in the home? How do you coparent with someone who seems to be so removed from reality, possibly pathological? How do you keep you family safe from the toxic affects of the other person's illness? Living a considerable distance from the child and her mother how do we determine how much danger she is in? How sick her mother truly is? Or do we trust an overloaded child services case manager to determine that? I can't answer ANY of these questions, but I know they have been spinning in a continual loop in my head for the last week. I suspect they will continue to spin for weeks to come.