“Caregivers in Michigan are reaching a breaking point,” reporting from Sarah Rahal and Hayley Harding at The Detroit News, took home second-place honors in community/local news reporting at SPJ Detroit’s annual Excellence in Journalism awards Monday night. The reporting was based on data from a survey that was part of an effort sponsored by the NY&MI Solutions Journalism Collaborative.
As the story reported, in Metro Detroit, caregivers are disproportionately people of color and often poorer than their county’s median household income. Only about a third of the combined population of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties is not white, but people of color made up 43% of survey respondents.
Nearly half of the respondents in the story say caregiving has taken a physical or emotional toll. Most caregivers are taking care of family members, including a significant number caring for parents, the survey found, but some are also taking care of neighbors and friends.
Read the full story on The Detroit News site.
Todd McInturf’s lead photograph in the caregiving package (below), captured Rosa L. Hunter, a 94-year-old dementia patient, being kissed by her daughter and caregiver, Rosa Eileen Hunter, 68, both of suburban Detroit. The photograph won fourth-place honors for Feature Photography.
The annual awards were presented at a ceremony recognizing approximately 300 journalists in southeast Michigan in print, broadcast, and digital media.
Winners of the Excellence in Journalism awards were selected by a panel of veteran journalists from an outstate chapter of SPJ. The Society of Professional Journalists, founded in 1909, is the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization.