Published on 12, July, 2020
I appreciate that the police are stopping people from driving to the park for a good reason - to prevent the spread of coronovirus. However, this leaves us with a problem of finding a safe place to let my 4 year old ASD son run around outside. We have a garden, but it would be good for his physical and mental well-being to exercise somewhere else for a change.
Normally we drive to a park he knows well, where it's safe to let him run around for ages. However, its 15 min drive away so we can't get there. So our only other option is to walk the streets with him, which is really not safe with a child prone to meltdowns and running off. He is also too big to go in the pushchair.
The thought of not being able to take him out is depressing.
There isn’t an outright ban on driving and in the circumstances I think a 15 minute drive would be seen as acceptable - this is my subjective view anyhow.
I was advised by a police officer to return home when I went to my usual 'remote' place (10 minutes drive away) to exercise so this is obviously not the case though there is no clear advice available. I asked him what was classed as 'local' when he said to return to my home and he avoided the answer by saying they are following government advice. I steeled myself to go for a walk directly from home this morning, have been nearly run down twice on country lanes and have encountered twice the number of people that I would normally, and nearly bumped into someone walking round a blind corner on the pavement. In that instance it was impossible to maintain social distance as we couldn't see each other.