Evacuation wouldn’t happen now would it?

My Dad's evacuation was part of the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB). The scheme finished when The City Of Benares was sunk with many children's lives lost. The ship my dad was on was 2 days further out of port when it happened.

There wouldn't have been much in the way of safe guarding ,my Grandparents ended up.with two.evacuees ,because the first person they had been sent to stay with was an older single male ,and they didn't feel. Comfortable,I'm not in anyway suggesting he was inappropriate with them but it seems a strange first choice for two.young girls
I.think they ended up staying with my Grandparents for a few years and always kept in touch with my Grandma right up.untill her death in 2001.

Approximately half of all evacuations were "private" rather than part of the government scheme - people sending kids to stay with people they knew in safer parts of the country or even other countries, such as the US / Canada. (I've heard of one case where the parents misjudged the situation pretty dramatically and sent their son to the Channel Islands). Some of these schemes were run through people's employers or other organisations, charities and so on. Some organisations like boarding schools and homes for disabled children moved wholesale for the duration. These evacuations tended to last longer than the ones that just send kids to entirely random strangers, in which a very high proportion of kids went home again within a year.

Evacuating your kids (in the government scheme) was never mandatory, and some people didn't. Being a host family, however, was - it was just a case of the man from the ministry checking if you had a spare room and a woman in the house and deciding how many evacuees you were getting - no choice. This, I think, is the part that would not fly today.

If there was a risk of my kids getting bombed, I think I would do it. And don't forget that in the government scheme, mothers of under-fives were evacuated with them.

Threat would be more on the lines of cutting electricity (Spain and Portugal this last week) and blocking communications (Russia and China do this to their own population now.
Civilisation as we know it would be held to ransom, no need to have a war with people fighting.

If covid happened again I think less people would obey but a different situation yes they would

🥰 x

@AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta 🙌💕 I'm okay now xx

Anxiety is horrible, it takes your mind to ridiculous places 😪

Of course, having concern for your children is perfectly reasonable with regard to the Russia situation, but the better use of your energy is to make some plans. Being organised and having plan B will probably boost your confidence as this goes on.

The Government has been quietly increasing what it calls "resilience" on national and local levels. Here's a link to one area's site for basic starting point. https://www.thamesvalleylrf.org.uk/prepare/are-you-ready

Having a "go" bag isn't new and if you're having trouble with the idea, just think of it as a form of insurance: getting it implies something could happen but you buy the right "policy" for you and hope you never need to use it. This is no different. It's like having a powercut box or first aid kit.

WW2-style child evacuation isn't likely. Warfare and parental expectations have changed to the point where communities would be evacuated on short term basis rather than children only on a long term basis.

There were enemy submarines ready to blow civilian ships out of the water no matter how much money you had. Air evacuation was equally subject to enemy fire. This is assuming the OP is talking about a war situation and not something only affecting our country. Even if she isn't, how tenable would mass emigration actually be?

Yeah this thread took a bit of an early 2020 turn, when people seemed convinced that we'd all be living a real life version of 21 days later.

Having said that I hope you are ok @mumofoneAlonebutokay (my fellow gossiper!) as anxiety is a horror to deal with sometimes.

A lot of people in the U.K. would leave. There wasn’t mass affordable international transport in the 40s and few people had a backup citizenship.

She can come to me in Wales if you'd like. She'd fit right in at my house. I hope it would never be needed but I am sure our community would step up if we were called on.

92% of the UK is not built on.

there’s space

You’re being ridiculous.

It was the same during the pandemic when William and Kate were trying to empathise about home schooling ,their three children
It's a vastly different experience having nannies and tutors to help compared
to the ordinary family trying to get their kids to engage.

@Sskkarules and laws can be changed to fit new circumstances though. If it came to it, evacuation might be seen as a lesser risk to children than being attacked by bombs and the awful consequences of that.

Yes I can imagine.

Whenever there is a documentary that says the Royal family lived on rations and had shallow baths I think about the vast estates they have and the produce that comes from them. And not just fruit and veg, game and farm animals.

No-one is fighting off intruders in waves. It is living in the realms of fantasy to think that one family can hold back a crowd of hundreds or thousands of desperate people. You'll fight them off for a few minutes then get overwhelmed and killed.

If we had a nuclear war, we're either all dead or the survivors will wish they were dead, so all that is irrelevant.

I see no logic in worrying about a fatal but extremely unlikely event none of us can do anything about. At worst, it will wreck your mental health.

How does someone know what’s going to happen to them in war? Civilians aren’t guaranteed to die or be directly affected. In a fire, you know you’ll burn to death. In war, it may not be heavily affecting your area, it may end soon, you may find a way to escape together. Millions of people are still living in Ukraine, for example, many still healthy and living as families. Many mothers and children moved countries to escape. How many children do you know who came on their own?

Its a massive safeguarding risk and I’m genuinely not sure which is better, a quick death or a childhood of abuse and being separated from your loving family and all the long term mental health issues that will undoubtedly cause. There are lots of bad people out there, my job is to keep my kids safe.

Farming family in Cheshire had no food shortages they had plenty of meat, vegetables, milk, eggs. Another relative took home a slaughtered pig once for the family.

This is exactly what i mean... people saying they'll stop the mob coming to their house and others saying you'd need to kill them all...

I mean how?

How many of us have a selection of rifles and ammunition? plus if this scenario ever was to play out, what happens when you go back out to get food/water.... you think the mob wont also have weapons?

Fucking ridiculous.

How many people are you willing to kill to be sure of that?

Do people really spend endless hours worrying about things that wont happen?

Russia cannot even defeat a relative small country like Ukraine, there is no other realistic threat to the UK.... though Reform do seem to want conflict with France....

The real threats to the UK come from ourselves & the idiotic things we do as a nation and as individuals.

Look at Ukraine! Look at Israel, Syria, Iraq, India/Pakistan. Not bombers overhead, but missiles and drones. Nuclear would be last resort.