Margaret Hussey, award winning producer of hundreds of hours of news and reality programs, will join her “women in media” colleagues in New York in June, when “Your Turn To Care” will receive a Gracie Award® for Outstanding Series. Hussey is the Executive Producer for “Your Turn To Care,” produced by KCET.
“Your Turn to Care” explores the often daunting challenges that face America’s growing generation of baby boomers as they step up to care for ailing or aging loved ones. The series is hosted by acclaimed actress and award-winning author Holly Robinson Peete, who shares her own experiences of caring for her father who had Parkinson’s disease. The series features a number of expert voices, most notably Gail Sheehy, author of Passages in Caregiving, who seek to contextualize the complex issues of caregiving for viewers, while highlighting personal stories from well-respected actors, television personalities, and journalists including Patricia Richardson (“Home Improvement”), Monica Potter (“Parenthood”), Hector Elizondo (“Last Man Standing”), Robert David Hall (CSI Crime Scene Investigation), Sandra Tsing Loh (NPR’s Morning Edition, KPCC) and Steve Lopez (“Los Angeles Times” columnist). The initiative was made possible with support from MetLife Foundation, California Community Foundation, The Lippey Family Trust and Gladyce L. Foster.
More than a series, “Your Turn To Care” offers an innovative broadcast, social media, and web-based engagement for the viewers, who can explore stories and information in a multi-faceted manner. Produced to air as a 4 part series, KCET and Hussey also launched a companion website (yourturntocare.org), featuring 50 videos and 100 articles with countless links to additional resources. “Modern storytelling flings a far net,” said Hussey. “From the beginning, we saw that it was important to keep the dialogue going, and to go outside the ‘box’ of the screen. The web site along with Facebook and Twitter not only provided resources to caregivers but also enabled a social media conversation. It was the goal of Your Turn To Care to speak to people in as many ways, through as many venues as possible.”
“There are nearly 48 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. alone who will be called upon to be caregivers” said Hussey, “As our population ages, we are experiencing the full force of what that actually means, emotionally, fiscally, pragmatically, as more and more of us step up to care for parents, older siblings, and loved ones. I was compelled to help bring these storie
