Will this be valiant Derek’s lasting legacy for those cared for at home?
KATE GARRAWAY: DEREK’S STORY
THIS will be Derek Draper’s legacy. The former Labour spin doctor, who died aged 56 in January after almost four years battling the ravages of Covid, has one more cause to champion.
His widow, ITV presenter Kate Garraway, is airing poignant footage from his last few months to expose the underfunding of families left caring for seriously ill loved ones at home. For the first time since Covid left him in a four-month coma, from which he slowly emerged, we hear his voice on camera.
Kate reveals in Derek’s Story on ITV tonight that she is deep in debt after having to pay up to £4,000 a week for her husband’s round-the-clock care. Additional physiotherapy and other treatments such as a hyperbaric oxygen tent cost her even more.
‘How can I afford that?’ she demands. ‘How can anybody afford £16,000 a month? Derek’s care costs more than my salary. And that’s before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay for any household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids.
‘I am in debt and I can’t earn enough money to cover my debt because I am managing Derek’s care. And I can’t even use the money I do have to support Derek’s recovery because it’s going on the basics all the time.’
She acknowledges that her situation, grim as it was then, was less difficult than it is for many. ‘I’m not going to pretend that I am poorly paid. I have an incredible job that I love which is well paid, but it’s not enough.’
Despite his debilitating illness, which left him incontinent, unable to walk and barely able to speak, Derek did not qualify for fully funded social care at home. Leaving hospital, Kate says, was like falling off a cliff – plunging from NHS care into freefall.
Now she is spearheading a campaign to highlight the problem. ‘We’ve got to get the public to understand how crucial and life-changing social care can be,’ she says. ‘We are entirely reliant on extraordinary carers, but the system in which they work is unbelievably complicated, unbelievably underfunded and trying to meet an impossible need.’
Though Derek was one of the most high-profile victims of long Covid, the hidden problem is far wider than most people guess. MP Liz Kendall, a former colleague of Derek’s at Labour’s Millbank HQ, tells Kate that one in five women in their 50s is an unpaid carer, the majority of them looking after elderly relatives.
‘There is currently no national budget for care,’ Ms Kendall says, ‘and the amount spent is based on individual local authorities, so it is a classic postcode lottery as to whether you get any support.’
If Kate, with her formidable clout at ITV, can bring pressure to help the one million people in Britain being cared for at home, some real good might result. With the pandemic now over and Derek having sadly died, it’s a practical way for her to move on and find purpose in everything her family has endured, without appearing to milk the misery.
The film strikes a balance between remaining upbeat even in Derek’s worst moments and revealing how wretchedly depressed he often felt.
One sequence, as he tries and fails to stand up before berating himself, howling the word ‘pathetic’, is especially difficult to watch.
In his last months, he often did not want friends to visit because he hated what he’d become. That’s understandable, but it must have made caring for him doubly difficult.
He was able to scrawl phrases on a pad and speak, though with difficulty. The rapidity of his answers to questions, though usually just a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, showed that in some ways his mind worked as quickly as ever – a mixed blessing, for his disability will have been even more frustrating.
THROUGH it all, Kate nursed a brittle optimism – celebrating what she calls ‘strawberry moments of positivity’. She talks about how hard it is to keep going when the person you love is unable to give love back in any conventional way.
‘Sometimes,’ she says regretfully, ‘you show love with a big bunch of flowers, and other times it’s bringing a cup of tea at the right moment – and he can’t do any of those things.’
When the little things are gone, only big things are left... and Kate Garraway has the opportunity to do something big in her husband’s memory.