Travelling back to uni and mixing of households

[Misstheoutside1]

DD will be travelling back to university sometime in the next few days in preparation for online exams. (Or we will most likely drop her off.) This is necessary as our Wi-Fi is terrible and keeps dropping, we have a tiny house and it’s not a good area to study/do exams. We thought she would be alone, however, two of her other housemates will also be going back.

It appears quite a few other students will also be travelling back after heading home for Easter- due to exams and/or make the most of properties they’ve paid £1000~ in rent, or even the majority of their stuff being there. My DD only bought a few days of clothes and ended up staying four weeks; she needs her computer as I need mine again for work, medication, etc...

Is this irresponsible, or simply one of the ‘life has to go in some areas’ event of the current times?


Realistically, I doubt DD will socially distance from her best friend who she lives with. I trust her to keep away from non-household friends, however, there’s zero chance she’ll socially distance within her ‘new’ household- It’s tiny anyway!

If it makes a difference, none of them have underlying health conditions or are shielding.

Is anyone else’s DD/DS in this situation?

[Palavah]

They'll have to be particularly vigilant about cleaning and handwashing etc for the first 2 weeks after they all move back in and keep an eye out for symptoms, if they can't /won't isolate themselves within the house.

Even if your DD will keep away from other households, will her housemates do this?

[Misstheoutside1]

Her housemates will, especially as they’ll be revising. Tbh there isn’t much they can do outside the house anyway, and her immediate friends live with her. The house is tiny, it wouldn’t be practical for them to stay two metres apart for 14 days or whatever. Even if it was, I don’t think they would anyway and the reality is they’ll probably both hug each other as soon as we leave.

She is an adult so that’s her decision, I suppose. Even if we did move her back home to get her stuff, she’s just paid rent for the entire summer and we’d have to do two trips anyway to get her stuff.

[maleficent53]

My daughter planning to return to uni house with friends If only to escape lockdown with us. To be honest I support this think she has had the virus needs to collect her things and has followed lockdown for the last few weeks.

[Ilets]

I'm not even understanding your question to be honest. Is there some rule about self isolating when moving to a new household?

[PeachOrchid27]

My son is going back to college where he usually lives on 11th May. He has severe autism and learning disabilities. There will be one other student in the house. They will self isolate for two weeks (as best as they are able to!

I’m not overly worried. College will be just as safe as home where he goes out with different support workers every day.

[MajesticWhine]

It's not irresponsible no. If she has to go back to uni and there is no choice, then it has to be done. It is not easy to socially distance within the household, so not reasonable to expect that.

[LilyPond2]

I don't think it's irresponsible provided your DD then carries on living in her student house for as long as lockdown lasts/until her tenancy comes to an end and keeps to the lockdown rules. Regarding the chances of her catching Covid-19 from her flatmates, this will obviously depend on (a) level of contact that the flatmate's family has had with the outside world; (b) level of contact that flatmates have with outside world once back (eg whether they have jobs that bring them face to face with others, whether they shop at supermarkets or get deliveries etc) and (c) whether flatmates have travelled back to the house using public transport (assuming they have travelled back in past 14 days).

My own student DS is currently at home and in all honesty I am happy anout that. A lot of his stuff is still in his student accommodation so we will have to collect at some point. Main issue for us would be that DH is high risk. If DS once moves out, we will have to think carefully about the terms on which we can allow him back in the house (eg would probably ask him to self-isolate for 14 days).

[bigbluebus]

I was wondering if my DS could come home from Uni. He didn't come home before lockdown and has remained in his Uni house ever since - as instructed by the Government and Uni. His one exam has been cancelled and his course ends in 2 weeks.
He intends to return to the Uni in Sept to do a Masters but as there is very little funding for that he needs to return home for the Summer to hopefully take up the 40 hour per week job he has done for the last 2 Summers. He can easily isolate here for a week when he returns as he currently lives with 2 others but DH is worried about being stopped by the police en route to collect DS. I can imagine there will be a huge amount of student movement as the exam period ends in the next few weeks regardless of the lockdown situation.