Grandparents exempt from local lockdown rules

[Deyes999]

I just read a story on Sky news that Grandparents or childcare providers both formal and informal can continue to do so in areas that are in lockdown. Surely that is putting some of the most vulnerable people at risk in already high risk areas? I know it's many people's lifelines for going to work etc and I totally understand that part but I just think after all the stories in the last few months saying about how we should be protecting vulnerable or older relatives it's odd to now put grandparents in this position.

Yes you think iabu
No you agree

@Deyes999

I just read a story on Sky news that Grandparents or childcare providers both formal and informal can continue to do so in areas that are in lockdown. Surely that is putting some of the most vulnerable people at risk in already high risk areas? I know it's many people's lifelines for going to work etc and I totally understand that part but I just think after all the stories in the last few months saying about how we should be protecting vulnerable or older relatives it's odd to now put grandparents in this position.

Yes you think iabu
No you agree

YABU. They haven’t said grandparents must carry out childcare so people can go to work..

yes it is under 14

We struggled as two frontline keyworkers with no childcare provision at all when nursery closed, despite the media there was little keyworker childcare provision for under fives, we were both so exhausted and DS suffered.
Both grandmas are around sixty and fit and healthy, they were so upset not to be able to help last time. By your standard they could go to work (I line manage people older than my mother) but not care for their grandchild? YABVU

There are other types of childcare available

Surely that depends on the hours you work? My husband and I are both prison officers. Yesterday we both had to leave before 7am, I got home just before 8pm, and my husband around 845pm. There is simply not childcare to accommodate these hours (during lockdown I only did night shifts as key worker care was obviously only available during schools hours). DH’s best friend is a police officer, his partner a nurse. They also both work 12 hour shifts that don’t suit formal childcare. My neighbour looks after her grandchildren while her daughter works as a teacher. The daughter has to leave for work before wrap around care is available. I have a friend who works in a supermarket, her shifts vary from 6am-10pm. Someone has to be able to take care of her children while she’s earning her money.
We need people to do these jobs, and if we suddenly remove all of the parents from these roles, we’re doing to be in trouble.

It depends on the age of the grandparent . I'm late 40s but not a grandparent even tho many my age are. So of course it's perfectly acceptable for grandparents of this age group to care for their grandchildren, of the grandparent is in their 80s it's a different matter entirely.

Because the economy would fail if a chunk of the workforce were not allowed to rely on informal care for their children.

This informal childcare also allows others such as aunts/uncles etc to cover childcare. You couldn’t say informal childcare by aunts and uncles is allowed but grandparents not. It would miss that a huge number of grandparents are not old. My dad is a grandfather, his best friend (who he went to school with) has a child aged 7. My dad is at no more risk from my son than his friend is from his child.

Ds gp on his dh side are retired in their 60s, very active and walk miles everyday with no underlying health conditions. They have ds once a week and have told us they wish to continue this. They do have elderly parents, one set of whom they visit once a week so I keep them updated as to every sniffle ds hasso they can make an informed decision about having him. They love their time with him and he loves them, its mutually beneficial and not to mention an absolutely huge help to us, I dont know what we would do without them!

My parents are also in their 60s dad is retired but my mum works from home (and is asthmatic, as am i), so its not really possible for them to have ds for child care at the moment but they also love having him and once mum retires in January she has said she would like to have him once a week. I'm happy for this but will be seeing what covid levels are like and if still very high will consider whether its a good idea to introduce another set of GPS looking after ds (as opposed to visits) in terms of potential exposure for more people.

I think adulgs should be able to weigh up their own risk, including the risk to mental health of family not seeing grandchildren (someone's going to jump on me for that, but ds is very much the centre of our families!) Versus the risk of covid transmission.

Good if it's under 14. How do they think people in Greater Manchester have been managing until now. Disingenuous pieces of shit, that they are.

@bellinisurge

Good if it's under 14. How do they think people in Greater Manchester have been managing until now. Disingenuous pieces of shit, that they are.

If I were a betting woman I'd say they know exactly how we've been managing!

Boris and co probably thought everybody had a nanny. The NI executive knew they didn’t, so they had already allowed for childcare in the local lockdown restrictions.

Yes I think they did know how it has been managed but now I think they will be cracking down and fining people they need to make this bit legal and allowed

ExH and I are older than the grandparents of most of our DS's classmates.

DS's own grandparents (ExH's parents) are in their mid 80s, and we've struggled at times over the past few years because they're really too old to help with childcare, so I've never asked (excluding approx three instances of evening babysitting in five years). I certainly wouldn't ask them to do it under the current circumstances, even if we had been relying on them before, because I wouldn't want to put them at risk. That said, they haven't exactly been shielding - even through lockdown, FIL was going shopping (in the supermarket 'oldies hour', with a mask on) and playing socially distanced golf. ExH says he couldn't talk them out of it! But honestly he and I have more vulnerability factors between us than his DPs do, yet we have to send DS to high school and just deal with the risk, which I find pretty scary.

I was talking to my neighbour about this. Very cynically he said that the government don't care about older people dying because it saves on their pensions.

Not all grandparents are old. I became a grandmother at 49. I still do the occasional school run now, I'm a fit, healthy 65 year old and I'll continue to do it.

I should add DD was shielding the first time round. She is the vulnerable one.

@oomymoomy

That sounds like sensible risk assessment to me!

Not all grandparents are old

This is true, of course. However as more is learned about the virus, the age of people at risk has dropped to age 50 and over. That's why the flu vaccine is now to be rolled out to all those aged 50 and older.

Obviously the older and more frail members of society will be at a higher risk but it would seem that it's now known that much younger people are also at risk.

@Sertchgi123

Not all grandparents are old

This is true, of course. However as more is learned about the virus, the age of people at risk has dropped to age 50 and over. That's why the flu vaccine is now to be rolled out to all those aged 50 and older.

Obviously the older and more frail members of society will be at a higher risk but it would seem that it's now known that much younger people are also at risk.

Someone should be telling my 59 year old mum to leave her job in the NHS and my 60 year old MIL to leave her job as a teacher then I guess.

@Quartz2208

Yes I think they did know how it has been managed but now I think they will be cracking down and fining people they need to make this bit legal and allowed

Yes, I think this is as much about not wanting to look utterly impotent as anything else. And knowing that local lockdowns are going to spread, so the reality that the economy does not and will not function without informal care slaps them around the chops a bit more. It's one thing when 'only' 3 or 4 million people are affected, quite another when there are multiples of that number.

@oomymoomy

My DH and I are in a similar situation to you. We adopted our DDs and I was 40 when DD1 came to us at age 1. Now she's 11 and DD2 is 8. I'm old enough to be their birth mum's mother so I'm definitely old enough to be their grandma.

My DM is 81 and my MIL will be 80 next month. So we haven't had much help with childcare, either, and we only saw them again very recently.

Although actually I'm probably as much at risk as they are, if not more so, as I'm finally come out of long-term Covid and have CFS too.

I see a lot of people past the ageof 60, looking after the children and doing school runs. It's their choice. I wish they can stay home to protect themselves. But then again its their life

I know of multiple cases where a grandparent has either given up work or reduced hours in order to look after DGC and is being paid to do so on the quiet. Most of those jobs would likely place the GP at more risk than looking after their DGC in their own home. I don't know how common that is, and for obvious reasons it's difficult to measure, but it's certainly something that happens.

I just think the whole thing is an absolute joke now. I'm currently in a discussion on Facebook about whether you can only have 2 households meet in a house in the UK right now, or whether it's any number so long as a max of 6 people. I'm saying the latter, lots of people think the former. I cannot actually find anywhere on the gov website where it says either - but that makes me believe there cannot be a 2 household limit, and if it only says 6 people without then specifying 'from two households', this bit must have changed.

The point is, people are arguing about what the rules are, because nobody bloody knows!

And it might SEEM like a good idea saying that each family can consider the risk in their own situation, but the problem is you never know exactly who is going to suffer with covid and how badly. I think at the moment, more people are being affected by lack of social contact than covid itself, which can seem rather like an abstract danger unless you've actually had it, or had family who've had it. So I think that given the choice right now, many, many grandparents would choose to take care of their grandchildren.

That is them deciding the risks to take - but if everyone took that choice, surely we're running the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed?

And if that's NOT a risk, then why the bloody hell do we still have all these restrictions?

Covid is either dangerous or it's not. We need to either protect the elderly, or we don't. But seriously. They need to make their minds up one way or the other!

My daughter's grandparent is the headteacher of a primary school of about 700 children. It would be a bit tricky for her not to be around children to be honest.