Family Cruises – Some Points to Consider

The family cruise market is buzzing with agents reporting an increase in interest from families for their offerings. The stereotype of cruises being only for OAPs no longer holds any ground. Modern cruises provide excellent entertainment for all members of the family. From waterparks to cinemas and casinos, there is lots to entertain those young and old. The Disney cruise is one that is particularly popular with kids (and big kids) and you can get great Disney cruise deals throughout the year.

However there are some points to consider when booking a family cruise.

• Health conditions of the particular cruise you book should be checked thoroughly. For example, some cruises won’t allow pregnant women on boards.
• Like any trip always check the additional fees. Always book travel insurance. Kids are lovely most of the time but they have a nasty habit of picking up illnesses at exactly the wrong time. Most travel insurers will refund the holiday if a member of the travelling party picks up an illness that makes them unable to travel.
• Another tip is to check the onboard prices. Drinks are notoriously expensive on cruises so be sure to check out the prices of food and drink when working out your costs.
• It is also worth having a look on the tipping policy on board the ship.

Great family cruise deals are available at a huge variety of locations so find one and enjoy.

School children leading the way on the environment

Following a year long quest, today 22 children are representing Britain’s 4 million schoolchildren to present their manifesto for a greener Britain to MPs. A group of bright young children from across the UK will set out their plan at meetings with Ed Miliband, Secretary Of State For Energy and Climate Change and Greg Barker, Shadow Minister for Climate Change

The Generation Green think tank has been set up by British Gas as part of its Generation Green schools programme.

The manifesto is calling for the following:

• All UK schools to set clear goals to cut their carbon and to be able to see how much energy they are using, so they can work with their teachers to find ways to cut down;
• Green issues to become a part of every lesson on the school timetable and for teachers to be given more training and support to help them do this;
• All schools to be given Government funding for green energy, in the same way as schools are given funding for books and other essentials;
• A ban on the standby button – stopping manufacturers from making electrical items with standby buttons;
• Government to make it easier for people to recycle by putting more recycling bins in public places like parks, city centres and restaurants;
• Government to make it easier for local businesses to recycle their waste.

Funding Your Child’s Further Education

Having children is certainly an expensive business. Young families usually have to cope with owning one of their first properties along with maintaining the child’s welfare, and as they grow older this can get a whole lot trickier. Not only have you got to think of how to spend money to keep your child happy, there’s also their higher education to consider. If you want your child to get through university, then it can present a financial conundrum - university costs £9,000 in tuition fees alone, and when accommodation and living costs are factored in this can double. So where are you going to find the £18,000 to finance your child’s education?

Student Loan

Unless you have a large amount of cash spare, then making sure your child has a student loan is essential if they are going to feel financially comfortable through university. A student loan has a rate of interest that matches the rate of inflation; therefore it is quite simply the cheapest loan your child will ever get. Even if it’s not needed, it’s worth getting and then putting into a savings account, as you will make a profit on the interest accrued - take a look at Alliance and Leicester for a comprehensive range of savings accounts. One thing to note about the student loan is that it’s purely for upkeep and accommodation. Fees are only repaid after university through whatever salary the graduate will have. So long as it’s over £15,000 a year, they will be repaying their student loan and fees as if it was another tax.

Child Trust Funds

If you’ve got your child’s further education in mind from their early age, then you’ll be on the right track for funding them through university - the earlier the better. One of the best ways to save is through a child trust fund. This is a stock market based investment, which the government will contribute to, and expires when the child reaches a certain age. Over the long term, the stock market is normally the best way to accrue the best return on your money, and investing regularly will see the value rise neatly. Just think, if you put in just £50 a month for 18 years, then that’s £10,800 even before the return on investment is considered! Basically, it will pay a lot to think of this early.

Banking and Insurance

Funding your child’s way through university is only part of the financial planning you’ll need to consider. Sure enough, if you take out a student loan and have an effective saving plan in place, then you’ll have much of the finance you’ll need to see them through the three or four years. Apart from this, you should also consider a student bank account. These are standard savings accounts with large interest free overdrafts - normally between £1,000 to £2,000. They can also offer perks for opening one, such as a free young person’s rail card for five years, or a £50 cash incentive. Further to this, student insurance is also vital. Considering the often lax security of student accommodation and the value of student property, it’s an important thing to consider - it might even be the most important thing to consider if something of high value was damaged or stolen!

New Pocket Money Petz website from The Children’s Mutual

According to new research from The Children’s Mutual, the old saying that good manners cost nothing is not strictly true, as 44% of children are now financially rewarded for good behaviour.

Award winning Child Trust Fund Provider, The Children’s Mutual, has revealed that as well as good behaviour, parents are also offering an ‘honest wage’ for a hard day’s work. 37% of children ‘earn’ their pocket money by helping out with chores around the home and 19% fill their piggy banks by helping out with the family pet.

As the Government announces plans to make financial education compulsory for children as young as five from 2012, leading Child Trust Fund provider The Children’s Mutual has launched a new Pocket Money Petz microsite which has been created to help parents teach their children about pocket money and saving.

Children can choose a ‘virtual’ pet, from a dog to a dinosaur, to help them learn to boost, manage and save their pocket money earnings, and while children have fun deciding which character to accompany them through PocketMoneyPetz, their parents can put a value against each chore to help them learn the value of money.

Tony Anderson, Marketing Director at The Children’s Mutual, said: “As children are receiving more and more pocket money in return for undertaking household chores, helping with the family pet and their good behaviour, we created Pocket Money Petz to help spark their imaginations about earning and saving money.”

According to The Children’s Mutual research, the going rate for pocket money has increased by a whopping 83% in a single generation from when their parents received pocket money until today. Parents are already giving an average of £2.85 a week to their child, with many (27%) parents expecting to increase this amount by £1 each year.

However, despite the rise in pocket money, The Children’s Mutual research showed that parents are often unsure of how much to ‘pay’ their children and can feel pressurised to compete with how much other parents give. Nearly one in five (18%) said there was pressure to conform to a ‘market rate’ and 16% said they feel they pay too much but ‘have to go with what everyone gets’. In response to these concerns, The Children’s Mutual has also created a Parents’ Pocket Money Guide which offers advice on teaching children about money, how to give pocket money, when to start and how much to give and how often.

Children also have their own user-friendly Pocket Money Guide which helps them to understand where money comes from, how to budget, keeping money safe, and ways of saving for the items they want. The colourful guide also comes with ready reckoners and games to help children become more familiar and used to dealing with money.

Bill Bailey shows the not-so-funny-side of drinking

This is the fourth film in this series to raise awareness about alcohol drinking with teenagers.

This ‘Behind the Scenes’ video shows the shooting of Comedian Bill Bailey’s film for the “Alcohol. It’s No Joke” campaign. Bill Bailey’s film talks about growing up and attitudes shared by friends and family, It talks about how drunken behavior can lead to out of character actions and on some occasions, accidents.

Also check out what Jo Brand has to say on this at http://kidszine.co.uk/2010/01/jo-brand-talks-about-perils-of-teenage-drinking/

Vitamin K2 can amerliorate problems of weak bones in dieting teenagers

The risk to dieting teenage girls of weak bones was recently reported in the Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1240859/Size-zero-pressure-girls-leads-weak-bones-say-scientists.html

“Dieting by teenage girls desperate to reach ’size zero’ could be putting their bones at risk, say British researchers. A team from Bristol University looked at more than 4,000 young people aged 15, scanning their bones to calculate their shape and density, as well as how much body fat they had.

Those with higher levels of fat tended to have thicker bones, with the connection being ‘particularly marked’ in girls. As girls tend to have higher levels of fat than boys, even when they are normal weight, the findings suggest fat plays an important role in female bone development.”

However a recent study reported by Dutch scientists in the British Journal of Nutrition , shows that a daily supplement (in children) of vitamin K2 in the menaquinone-7 (MK-7) form improved the levels of osteocalcin, a vitamin K-dependent protein which is essential for the body to use calcium in bone tissue efficiently. Without adequate vitamin K, the osteocalcin remains inactive, and thus not effective.

Paediatric doctor Dr. Marieke van Summeren of Utrecht University and her co-workers recruited 55 healthy children to participate in a double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial. Children were randomly assigned to receive either dailyMK-7 supplements (45 micrograms, MenaQ7 provided by NattoPharma, Norway), or placebo for eight weeks.

“The present study is the first one to demonstrate that increased vitamin K intake by supplement improves the osteocalcin activity in children,” said Professor Cees Vermeer spokesperson and expert at the VitaK research centre in Maastricht.

Osteoporosis is characterized by low bone mass, which leads to an increased risk of fractures, especially the hips, spine and wrists. An estimated 75 million people suffer from osteoporosis in Europe, the USA and Japan. Women are four times more likely to develop osteoporosis than men.

Potential reduction of osteoporosis has to date been approached by either attempting to boost bone density in high-risk post-menopausal women by improved diet or supplements, or by maximising the build up of bone during the highly important prepubescent years. About 35 per cent of a mature adult’s peak bone mass is built-up during puberty.

MenaQ-7, a daily supplement from Springfield Nutraceuticals, formulated using natural vitamin K2 (MK-7) derived from Japanese natto a fermented soy product is now available in the UK from Independent Health Food Stores and Pharmacies.

Jo Brand talks about perils of teenage drinking

We are pleased to be able to publicise this video from Jo Brand on behalf of the Alcohol It’s No Joke campaign.

It’s all too easy to laugh off the effects of alcohol and forget that drink can put young people in vulnerable situations. It’s no joke. Recognising that alcohol is a serious issue and talking about the good and the bad sides can help young people stay safe, confident and responsible as they grow as teenagers.

In this clip, Jo Brand to talk about her experiences of alcohol as a teenager. Jo talks about how she experienced the consequences of alcohol firsthand and in her job as a psychiatric nurse. As a mother to two young girls, she explains how she aims to talk to them about alcohol as early as possible.

The aim of this film is to show that alcohol can make young people vulnerable. Although parents worry about unprotected sex, drugs and crime, drinking alcohol is often not top of the list. Alcohol can be the thing which leaves young people vulnerable and in situations they might not know how to deal with.

This film is the one of a series featuring other comedians including Bill Bailey, Russell Kane and Josie Long and is part of the build-up to a big campaign launch in mid-January.

More infoamtion at www.itsnojoke.tv

Win a family adventure holiday with Chessington World of Adventures

To launch its brand new land, Wild Asia, Chessington World of Adventures has teamed up with wildlife enthusiast and broadcaster Nick Baker and tourist board VisitEngland to find families that take adventure to a different level.

Whether it is a trip exploring the rainforest, making mum hold a tarantula to overcome a fear of spiders, camping in your back garden or perhaps a trip around Britain to go on as many rollercoasters as you can – whatever adventure you have encountered we want to hear about it! If this sounds like your family or a family you know, nominate them now at www.chessington.com/wildasia and they could be crowned Britain’s Most Adventurous Family!

To apply or nominate a family you know, visit www.chessington.com/wildasia and in 200 words or less explain why you think your family deserves the title. Upload photographs if you have them to really show us why you think your family deserves to win.

Three families will be invited to a boot camp with Nick Baker at Chessington World of Adventures on Wednesday 7th April 2010 where exploration of the brand new land, Wild Asia, will be the name of the game. And the overall winning family will be crowned Britain’s Most Adventurous Family after the Boot Camp, walking away with a fantastic family adventure holiday!

Age limit: Please note children need to be between 4 and 14 to enter the competition.

Do Old Wives Tale family health cures work - Dr Sarah Brewer TV Show

Will chicken soup solve your family’s sniffles? Should you feed a cold and starve a fever? And is it possible to become immune to painkillers if you take them regularly? Find out by watching this live WebTV show with GP, mum and author of numerous health books, Dr Sarah Brewer.

Research has shown that half of women believe in family health advice passed down through the generations, despite the fact this may have little or no medical basis. In fact, outdated health myths picked up from our mothers and grandmothers could prove futile or, at worst, even dangerous for our family’s health. For instance, one in five women uses butter to treat burns despite strong medical advice against this.

With the cold and flu season now upon us, this WebTV show is your chance to share your inherited family remedies and find out from a medical professional if they actually work. Dr Sarah Brewer will help us separate health fact from fiction, as part of Panadol Advance’s Health Hearsay campaign - a medical myth-busting drive by mums, for mums.

Joining Dr Brewer will be busy mum-of-two, Fiona Joyce, from Panadol’s Mums Panel, which has been uncovering the nation’s popular ‘health hearsay’ and working with medical professionals to bust common medical myths. Fiona will be sharing some of the most popular (and bizarre) health remedies put forward by mums from the Mums Panel at Panadol’s last Health Hearsay focus group.

Dr Sarah Brewer and Fiona Joyce join us live online on Friday 27th November 2009 at 1300 to sort medical fact from fiction in family medicine.

Use the box below to submit your questions beforehand. If you have missed the broadcast, you will be able to watch anytime after by viewing below.

For more information visit www.mypainrelief.com

Samaritans Lisa’s Story Advert

We’ve just been given the video for the Samaritans Lisa’s Story new TV advert being shown this November.

As we move towards the Christmas season, makes you think about all those who aren’t lucky enough to be part of a happy family life.

To donate to Samaritans and help them continue to answer every call, 24/7, 365 days a year please visit: www.samaritans.org/lisa.

Here’s the video:

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