Christmas burnout: why stressed parents find it ‘harder to be emotionally honest with children’

Advent calendars, check. Tree and decorations, check. Teachers’ presents, nativity costumes and a whole new ticketing system for the PTA’s Santa’s grotto, check. But the Christmas cards remain unwritten, the to-do list keeps growing, and that Labubu doll your child desperately wants appears to have vanished from the face of the earth.If you’re feeling frayed in the final days before Christmas, you’re not alone

‘We’ve got more in common than what divides us’: a Muslim-Jewish kitchen in Nottingham counters hate and hunger

As antisemitism and Islamophobia rise, a community centre brings people together over shared meals, offering an antidote to food poverty, social isolation and divisionDonate to the Guardian Charity Appeal 2025 hereCommunities are our defence against hatred. Now, more than ever, we must invest in hopeIt’s 2.30pm on a Wednesday afternoon and the Himmah Hub, a community centre in Nottingham, is abuzz with activity. Crates of leftover supermarket food are being carried inside, trestle tables assembled, and volunteers are arriving to prepare meals that will be served in a few hours’ time to anyone who needs one – a queue has already begun to form outside.This is the Salaam Shalom kitchen, known as SaSh, a joint Muslim-Jewish project set up in 2015, and based on one of the core tenets of both faith groups: bringing people together through food

NHS to trial potentially life-saving treatment for deadly liver disease

The NHS is to trial a potentially life-saving new treatment for a deadly liver disease that causes the body’s vital organs to fail.Thirteen major hospitals will use a device that cleans patients’ blood that has become corrupted by toxins as a result of them developing acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF).ACLF is a severe and hard-to-treat form of liver disease linked to obesity, alcohol and hepatitis, in which patients suddenly deteriorate and have to be admitted to intensive care. Three out of four people affected are only diagnosed when it has already become life-threatening.Seven out of 10 people with the disease die within 28 days and only a handful of those affected are eligible for a liver transplant, which is the only existing way to reverse ACLF

Pressure grows on DWP over ‘misleading’ response to carer’s allowance scandal

Senior officials who oversaw a flawed benefits system that plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt are under mounting pressure over their “misleading” response to the scandal.Prof Liz Sayce, the chair of a scathing review into the government’s treatment of unpaid carers, last week called for an overhaul of management and culture at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).Days after the publication of the review, the DWP’s top civil servant in charge of carers’ allowance, Neil Couling, said carers themselves were at fault for the decade-long failures.His comments, revealed by the Guardian, have prompted a key adviser to the Sayce review and a leading carer’s charity to declare a lack of confidence in the department’s pledge to fix the issues.Prof Sue Yeandle, the UK’s leading expert on unpaid carers, said ministers and senior officials had issued “really misleading” claims that the failures affected only a small number of people

‘Better out than in’: why a South Yorkshire charity wants people to speak their mind

It was a filthy day in Rotherham as Storm Bram swept through the town earlier this month. Roads had turned into rivers and sodden St George’s flags flapped from lamp-posts at half mast.Inside the community centre, the heating was turned up, the bacon butties were on order and the tea was brewing. It was time for some Difficult Conversations. Some of them, it turned out, about those soggy flags

Young people will suffer most from UK’s ageing population, Lords say

Young people will suffer most from the government’s failure to take seriously the unsustainable pressure on public finances and living standards created by the UK’s ageing population, according to the findings of a House of Lords inquiry.The report, Preparing for an Ageing Society, by the economic affairs committee, also found successive governments’ inaction on adult social care “remains a scandal”.But it also argued against the impact of age discrimination in the workplace. “The most damaging form of age discrimination [could be] self-directed, with older workers operating under a mistaken impression of its extent and therefore limiting their own choices,” it found.Lord Wood of Anfield, the committee’s chair, said, unlike the unpredictable challenges of climate change, defence and AI, ageing was a knowable, long-term challenge – and one that will touch every area of society and the economy