Half-term break to cost parents £1.7bn Londoners will shell out the most, averaging nearly £500 for the week. Keeping your children entertained this half term will be costly. Cash-strapped parents will shell out an average of £230 to keep their children entertained for half-term break, totalling £1.7bn nationwide. One in five mums and dads have put themselves in debt struggling to afford the cost of school holidays, according to research from Sheila’s Wheels home insurance. With more than half of parents admitting that they are concerned about the cost of entertaining the kids as household budgets continue to buckle under the strain of the rising cost of living. According to the findings, a quarter of parents plan to take their children on at least three costly days out over the February half term, with each day out costing an average of £53. Londoners will fork out as much as £67 a day on outings for their children - racking up a total half term spend of £469. What’s more, over a third of parents admit that February half-term is the worst holiday for entertaining children, with a more than four in ten mums and dads revealing the winter weather forces them to splurge on gifts and expensive excursions to keep their kids busy. "In these tough economic times it is no wonder that the costs associated with keeping kids entertained over the holidays are putting added pressure on family finances,” said Jacky Brown, spokesman at the insurer.

Parents take on extra help as work hours get longer One nanny used to be enough to look after children and keep the house tidy. But now parents want more: new research shows an increasing number of families are taking on an extra member of domestic staff. Two thirds of families with nannies now also employ cleaners, gardeners and housekeepers or more unusually cooks, personal assistants or additional nannies. Agencies believe the increase is down to parents working longer hours and therefore needing more help at home. The number of families with nannies who now employ extra assistance has risen from 22 per cent of those surveyed in 2010 to 61 per cent in 2012, according to Nannytax, a payroll service for families who employ nannies. Its annual survey - which involved 702 nannies, 1,145 families and 46 nanny agencies - also found nannies now worked longer hours, with 14 per cent of full-time ones working more than 60 hours per week, up from two per cent in 2010. The majority (55 per cent) worked between 51 and 60 hours per week. Helen Harvey, a director at Nannytax, said: “I suspect those in the highest paying jobs, those needing to hire a nanny, are finding their time is even more scarce with more demands at work, hence they are needing more support to keep the home running.” Related Articles Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to break with royal tradition 09 Dec 2012 Taxman out to catch the middle class family nanny 24 Mar 2012 The rise of the "supernanny" 07 Jan 2012 Joanna Dempsey, 41, and her husband Graham, 44, marketing director of a pharmaceutical company, employ a full-time nanny, Arianne Buchanan, 24, to look after their children, Stirling, five, and Beux, three, as well as a housekeeper, Theresa Blanchard, 50, who works three days a week. Mrs Dempsey, from Cambridge, who has recently set up her own businesses - Life Productions - which produces films of children for their parents, said: “The harder you work, the more support you need at home and because you are working so hard, when you are at home, you just want quality time with the children. "But it is a vicious circle, you work hard to pay for everybody so that you can work harder.” Current vacancies for nannies advertised through Nannies of St James, which recruits for high-profile clients in London, include a family advertising for a nanny to work alongside a maternity nurse, another family in Oxford who already have a part-time housekeeper and a family in Dublin looking for their fourth nanny. Rosemary Newton, partner at the firm, said: “The economy means people are more committed to keeping their jobs and their careers and their businesses in play and so are working longer and harder – people are really having to earn their money these days. “As a result, I don’t think people are seeing as much of their children but if you want to keep the kids at private school you have to keep your job and therefore you pay out more in staff costs just to make sure everything is running smoothly at home.” Amber Jones, director of Tigerlily Childcare, said some families had also realised that nannies could not do everything. “We have two high-profile clients at the moment who both have nannies and hired housekeepers alongside,” she said. “We are seeing more of this with the weSalthy families definitely, it is two salaries so obviously families have got to be able to afford it but I think what families are realising, especially if they have more than two children, is that it is very difficult to get one person to do everything that the family needs.”

Unhappy childhood linked to heart risk in later life Storing up heart problems? Continue reading the main story Related Stories Loneliness 'major health issue' Job strain 'puts women at risk' Body clock link to heart disease Emotional behaviour in childhood may be linked with heart disease in middle age, especially in women, research suggests. A study found being prone to distress at the age of seven was associated with a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease in later life. Conversely children who were better at paying attention and staying focused had reduced heart risk when older. The US researchers said more work was needed to understand the link. Their study looked at 377 adults who had taken part in research as children. At seven they had undergone several tests to look at emotional behaviour. They compared the results from this with a commonly used risk score for cardiovascular disease of participants now in their early 40s. After controlling for other factors which might influence heart disease risk, they found that high levels of distress at age seven were associated with a 31% increased risk of cardiovascular disease in middle-aged women. For men with high levels of distress in childhood - which included being easily frustrated and quick to anger - the increased risk of cardiovascular disease was 17%. For 40-year-olds who had been prone to distress as a child, the chances of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years increased from 3.2% to 4.2% for women and 7.3 to 8.5% for men. Adversity The researchers also looked at positive emotional factors such as having a good attention span and found this was linked with better cardiovascular health, although to a lesser degree. Other studies have linked adversity in childhood with cardiovascular disease in adults. And research in adults as linked poor emotional wellbeing with higher levels of cardiovascular disease, the researchers pointed out in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Study leader Dr Allison Appleton, said more research would now be needed to work out the biological mechanism that may underpin the finding. "We know that persistent distress can cause dysregulation of the stress response and that is something we want to look at." Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said it was already known that a child's health could often have a bearing on their future wellbeing. But she added that more research was needed before it could be clear that any possible link existed between emotions in childhood and the risk of cardiovascular disease in later life. "There are positive steps parents can take to protect their child's future heart health. "What we learn when we're young can often set the tone for our habits later in life, so teaching children about physical activity and a balanced diet is a great place to start."