Kate Garraway planning first family holiday after the death of Derek Draper

Kate Garraway shared that she's organising her family's first holiday since her husband Derek Draper passed away.

Draper, a political lobbyist, died in January at 56 after a lengthy battle with the long-term effects of Covid.

While the ITV star acknowledged that the occasion will be inevitably tough, she expressed her determination to plan "something lovely" for kids Darcey, 18, and Billy, 14, after a challenging four years.

“We will get a family holiday,” Garraway told MailOnline. “But it’s going to be a bit challenging because it’s a different kind of family set up that we have now.”

Draper died on January 3 after suffering a heart attack just before Christmas almost four years after he first fell seriously ill with Covid.

He was plagued with health woes after contracting the virus in March 2020, and, despite needing 24 hour care, was advised he wasn't deemed sick enough to qualify for funded care.

In March, Garraway revealed how the £16,000 monthly cost of her husband's care was more than her salary from ITV, causing her to rack up huge debts.

In their documentary, Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, the 56-year-old revealed: "Derek's care costs more than my salary from ITV and that is before you pay for a mortgage, before you pay any household bills, before you pay for anything for the kids, so we are at a crunch point.

"I am in debt. 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 added: “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.”

After the doc aired, Garraway appeared on This Morning and said she does not “regret or begrudge” the large debts she racked up paying for care.

She told hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley: “I will pay it, absolutely. And I don’t regret it, I don’t begrudge it.

“It was the right thing to do. You have no choice and I was lucky because I had a job where people understood and gave me time to rush off to hospital at a moment’s notice, or be around ,or go to the appointments, or be there to care.

“There was one time when they cancelled the care, which turned out to be a mistake, and in the end the carer did turn up even though they didn’t know they were going to get paid.

“And that’s the people that you’re dealing with, they’re travelling a long way, they don’t always live near you, they came.

“For those that are professional carers that are doing it on their own, it’s a massive thing and I don’t even think it’s political.

“I think it’s all of us, we’ve just got to realise that we have to make this a priority.

“As a society, we have to because we’re all going to get sick, we’re all going to be vulnerable, we’re all going to need it, or be the person doing the caring, probably both in a lifetime

Garraway previously chronicled the impact of caring for her husband in two other ITV documentaries - Finding Derek and Caring For Derek.