This living arrangement makes sense surely?

[lyralalala]

There’s outrage in a group of friends at the moment at a friend’s choice to “mix two households in the height of a pandemic”

Her household was her, her husband and their two children. Her husband is a policeman so is obviously still working

Her Mum is in the high risk category. Lives alone. Has carers four times a day to make meals and help her dress/bathe. At the moment the carers have been different people on several days because of illness in the care team. Friend’s husband does the shopping and leaves it on the doorstep. The carers unpack it.

For the last two weeks friend’s husband has stayed in a local hotel that has rooms for police or NHS staff. Friend and the children have completely self isolated. They’ve used UHT milk and frozen veggies so they could completely isolate.

Today they walked (her mum lives in the next street) and have moved in with her Mum to eliminate the need for the carers. Now they know her Mum could have been infected by the carers already, but they felt it was safer for her to be looked after by people who have isolated and are safe rather than an ever changing rota of carers as she is the most vulnerable in the family.

The husband will live alone in the house and drop off the shopping.

Ideally they would have done it earlier, but they wanted to be sensible and do it in the best way to protect her Mum

Everyone else should mind their own business.

What is their objection exactly?

I’m not really understanding the outrage. It’s perhaps against the rules in terms of not mixing households, but her Mum was essentially having to mix households multiple times a day because of the changing carers (who like many workers often didn’t have proper PPE)

People are really het up over it on the group chat because they haven’t seen their parents, but none of them have parents who have carers coming in each day so it’s not the same.

It's very sensible, and probably the safety option for the mum. Everyone else needs to butt out. If they'd prefer an elderly lady was exposed to multiple people a day, and that the carers by extension were exposed to each other, just cos they miss their parents, then they're shit friends

They can move in with their parents too if they want to isolate!

However, I suspect they don’t want that.

You can join households together if it’s a (semi) permanent change. It’s not against the law.

You can’t compare visiting your parents to moving in with them to care for them.

I think they’ve organised things really well and it’s great that her husband can drop things off. Just make sure they sterilise all the food packaging that cones in. There are probably a few angry people that don’t want to look after their elderly relatives and are worried that the actions that this lovely family has taken, will put pressure on them to do similar.

Only thing I would say, not that it's any of my business, is that I hope your friend hasn't underestimated the work involved in caring for an older adult, who sounds fairly dependent if she needs carers 4 times daily.

That she is doing this single handed, plus caring for 2 children (depends on children's ages of course), is particularly onerous.

Good luck to her though.

I think it's great! Its well thought through and in effect they are minimizing the risk by cutting out the ever changing care staff.
We need more people stepping up and talking care of the elderly where possible.

@wingedharpy She hasn’t, I did check. Her mum has the carers 4 times a day, but Cooking her food (well microwaving it) and helping her dress as she can’t do zips and buttons is the only help she gets/needs. The rest of the time she’s fine on her own.

I just don’t get people. I’m starting to realise recently that some of my friends are actually not very pleasant people. It’s a revelation I’m not enjoying.

Proof that many people are sadly not intelligent enough to see the differences in specific sets of facts. Such people should be ignored.

It sounds like a really sensible idea

It sounds very sensible to me.

Sounds a very sensible and well thought through arrangement. Shame your friends are not directing their outrage at the government for letting things get to this stage.