Inside Kate Garraway's financial ruin - How ITV star's hefty salary dwindled to ... trends now
The letters – more than 8,000 of them – have been arriving by the bagful since Kate Garraway's husband, Derek Draper, died in January.
Derek, 56, a political-lobbyist-turned-psychotherapist, endured a painful and debilitating decline after becoming one of the first people in the UK to contract Covid-19 in March 2020. He spent 98 days in a coma, paralysed, intubated and unable to communicate, with the virus ravaging every organ in his previously-healthy body.
After his discharge from hospital in 2021, Kate cared for him at home, watching in horror as her husband of 18 years slowly improved, then declined – and eventually slipped away as she and their two children, Darcey, 17, and Billy, 15, sat at his bedside in a London hospital on January 3.
Shortly afterwards, when ITV Good Morning Britain presenter Kate, 56, shared the tragic news with the world, the letters started coming.
Kate Garraway and son Billy read birthday cards at the bedside of stricken husband Derek
Ms Garraway gives an emotional interview in Derek's Story at 9pm on ITV tonight
There were hand-written cards and notes of condolence, all of them heartfelt – but most of the senders had something in common: they, like Kate, were carers. They had devoted their lives, sacrificed their careers and given up everything to care for loved ones who, for one reason or another, were unable to look after themselves.
They too felt frustrated, and financially crippled, by the bureaucratic maze of the UK care system – one which Kate insists is 'broken' and in urgent need of reform.
'It's supposed to be a system that's meant to catch you if you fall,' she explains. 'But, actually, it feels like it's trying to catch you out. You feel like you're in the dock answering questions about things that will literally mean life or death for someone you love.'
Derek Draper's daughter Darcey serves as a pallbearer at his funeral in February
Derek Draper and Kate Garraway before Covid struck. They were married for 18 years
In fact, the presenter reveals in a moving documentary, Kate Garraway: Derek's Story, being shown on ITV tonight, such was the huge financial burden of caring for Derek – who required round-the-clock support from a team of professionals – that it has left her with debts of up to £800,000.
His care cost £4,000 a week (£208,000 a year over almost three years) – far more than the broadcaster, whom many might assume had millions in the bank from her high-profile TV and radio roles, could afford.
'Derek's care costs more than my salary at ITV,' Kate reveals in the documentary, which was filmed last autumn.
'His basic need, not including any therapy, is nearly £4,000 a week. How can I afford that? How can anybody afford £16,000 a month?
'And that's before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay for household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids. So we are at crunch point.'
In an astonishing confession, she admits she couldn't afford to have the heating on in the family home last October.
'It's the brutal reality that Derek's salary is over and his expenses are up,' she said, speaking candidly on screen. 'We haven't got the heating on anywhere but in his room. Everything is more expensive. I don't know what to do.'
Kate added: 'I am in debt, I can't earn enough money to cover my debt because I am managing Derek's care. I have an incredible job that I love and it's well paid. But it's not enough.
If this is what it's like for me, what on earth is it like for everybody else?'
Add to this the £700,000 debt incurred by Derek's psychotherapy company – which continued to rack up running costs despite generating no revenue when he fell ill – and the past four years have saddled the family with as much as £1.5million debt.
That does not include the vast cost of rehabilitative therapies, including treatment at a pioneering clinic in Mexico last December, which depleted their savings to virtually nil.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain yesterday morning, a deeply-emotional Kate, who returned to co-host the show on Fridays, a month after Derek's death, said she felt 'ashamed' to be in debt.
'I'm not a carer travelling miles, paying for my own transport, to help someone. I'm someone who is very well-paid and I feel ashamed I couldn't make it work.'
She admits she has entered 'survival mode' to keep things as normal as possible for the couple's two children. But having been deluged by messages of support, she feels the moment has come to speak out.
For as she now knows, she was far from alone in her plight.
According to Carers UK, there are around 10.6million carers - defined as someone looking after a family member, partner or friend who needs help because of illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or addiction - in the UK today.
A staggered 5.7million are unpaid and 2.5 million of these unpaid carers are also juggling employment.
More than half of unpaid carers are female. In fact, one fifth of women aged 55-60 is, as Kate was, a carer - a number that experts predict will rise.
The charity's 2022 State of Caring report found that 44 per cent of working-age adults who are caring for 35 hours a week or more are in poverty, with a quarter cutting back on essentials like food and heating.
Carer's Allowance, paid to almost a million UK adults annually, amounts to just £76.75 per week.
Of course, none of this would seem to be relevant to Kate Garraway, one of Britain's best-known and most popular TV presenters, with a reported net worth of £1.5million and an estimated annual salary of around £200,000.
So how did she, of all people, come to be so crippled by debt?
The complex set-up of England's care system, with responsibility falling to the country's 152 local authorities, is at the heart of it,
Firstly, care funding is not means-tested, so neither Kate's savings nor salary had any bearing on how much support she received. Instead, she says, it's a 'postcode lottery'.
Once Derek was discharged from hospital, his eligibility was reviewed for 'continuing
