Day 30

With just over 4 weeks of shielding down our thoughts have turned to what happens next. The government, with their original information regarding shielding gave the expectation that the vulnerable would be expected to stay indoors and away from people for 12 weeks, at least.

It's that at last bit that causes the concern, as I notice the Gov.uk advice now says until the end of June, which will actually be 14 weeks from the point where the government initially told the vulnerable to stay indoors - my belief is it will go beyond that, how long, who knows. I guess there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge before the end of June - so hopefully things will change for the better in that time.

I am someone who thinks ahead, quite possibly too far ahead, and worry about what is going to happen - sometimes this drives my wife mad. We go on holiday and I check the weather forecast for weeks on end before we go, working out what we will do if the weather is crap. So with this my worrying head on, I felt I should try and get some advice or even help from our GP regarding our situation.

For those that don't know, our situation is this. My wife and I look after 3 children who were all previously in local authority care. Each of the children have their own needs and problems. The eldest at 19, works a zero hours contract in a children's nursery, the 2nd one at 17 has just finished college, while the little one is only 3 and is at nursery, but is due to start school in September.

The older two have mixed amounts of learning difficulties, one of the traits of that for them is little or no understanding of personal hygiene, which has been a problem within the house for the last 8 years. It doesn't matter how many times we have the conversations, little or nothing changes - we simply couldn't trust them to follow the stringent hygiene recommendations as laid out in the shielding rules. On top of this neither of the girls understand when they have a cold, let alone a deadly virus. It's something that people, even doctors, don't appear to understand, they have a complete disconnect with their bodies and just don't get it.

This was the reason I/we took the decision for us all to carry out the shielding process. If anyone has read the government advice for those shielding in a mixed home, then you will understand that following the government advice would be tantamount to putting my wife in prison, in solitary confinement - this seemed the best option for all involved, and would, for now, keep us all safe.

So anyway, back to the point, I rang our GP today to ask their advice. Despite explaining our individual situation, which the GP knows, all we could get out of them was the general advice as per the Gov.uk website, nothing for individual circumstances, just a coverall from the government. Thanks for your help and understanding!

We have time for things to change, it looks like we have another 10 weeks of this, minimum, so let's see what happens...