DD wants friend to come and live with us

[bellylaughs]

DD (teenager) has a friend who lives in very difficult circumstances. I don’t want to go in to detail but it’s pretty grim. Although she is not in any danger.
Life was tough for her anyway but obviously a lot worse for her now she’s indoors almost 24/7.

DD wants us to offer this girl that she can come stay with us for the rest of the lockdown and she feels desperately guilty that her friend is so down and sad and has no relief.

We know this girl and usually would be very happy to have her but obviously now me and DH are concerned that we would be breaking rules if she came. But is there a balance between interpretation of the rules and a young person’s mental well being? Or should she just have to get on with it.

If it's a welfare issue I'd not think twice. But if she moves in with you, how is she likely to cope with living to your rules and standards? Might she find it too difficult?

I would in a heartbeat. But I would also make it clear that there will be no moving between houses after this. She needs to make sure she has everything she would need for the stay.

The rules allow movement for vulnerable individuals.

It sounds like you have a very caring daughter.

I would if her parents ( and social services if relevant) are on board. You should probably ask her to self isolate for 7 days in the house when she arrives.

For me it would very much depend on why. If serious enough yes, if not then I’d consider if I did the right thing if my family contracted the virus from her (possible)

Wouldn’t social services try and place her with a foster family? I hope they’re not involved because living with strangers, and at a time like this, would be awful for her.

She may play up a bit being a teen etc but maybe nothing serious and if she has been your DDs pal for a while then I’m thinking that you already know her and what her behaviour is like.

The majority of us think you should and anyway who cares what we, a bunch of strangers from the internet, think. Do it and if her parents aren’t the best then they probably won’t give a shit if she’s there or not.

We’ve been over it and over it today and finally decided not to invite her to stay. This was mostly based on two points.

Firstly as I stated in the OP she is not in any kind of danger. She has a caring parent at home. But for other reasons her life is pretty grim in lockdown.
Secondly, we have a close friend whose healthy teenager has just recovered from an extremely bad dose of Covid coupled with tonsillitis and has had to be nursed day and night through a closed door etc. Several emergency calls were made to 111 when breathing was compromised etc.

Thankfully he is out of the woods now but weighing up my DD’s friends home life against the possibility of her being that ill while living at ours it didn’t seem worth taking the risk of her being away from home at such a time.

My DD has understood (it helped when I showed her the fairly harrowing texts from my friend regarding her son) and is not happy but accepts the decision. We’ve talked about other ways she can help her friend in lockdown.
Thanks for all the opinions on here.

fair enough

Households can be merged if need be.
This has been covered by the Q and As more than once.

MIL moved into our household a fortnight ago. It was delayed after the announcement of 'lockdown' as we wanted to completed our fortnight self isolation and we wanted MIL to wait until my FIL's coved test results came back negative.

Other example that were covered by Q and As: students moving back home to live with parents, partners who don't usually live together deciding to move in, people fleeing from DV, people mid house move.

The key is that once the household merge it is for the duration of the shut down.

So if I decide to move in with my partner until the end of lockdown, it's ok?

@Changed1234 yes it’s ok, this has specifically been discussed by the medical advisors as ok.

@eska thank you for that. Where could I find evidence of this please? A bit paranoid!