Focus on Children

Sesame Street Workshop is producing a new primetime television special, When Families Grieve featuring Katie Couric and the Sesame Street Muppets. This PBS special will air on April 14th at 8:00 PM EST.

This hour-long special will present families’ personal stories about coping with the death of a parent, as well as strategies that have helped these families move forward.  Televised in conjunction with the Month of the Military Child & Month of the Young Child, it will be part of a multimedia, bi-lingual (English and Spanish) outreach kit for national distribution immediately following the April airdate.

There will be two resource kits available for distribution, one kit will be military specific and the other kit will be for the general public. Military OneSource (MOS) will only distribute the military kit. The resource kit will include the DVD from the taping of the PBS special, a caregiver guide and a story book. The resource kit will be available through MOS beginning 14 April. The resource kit for the general public will be available for distribution through other sources.

When Families Grieve is a continuation of Sesame Workshop’s award-winning Talk, Listen, Connect initiative that first launched in July 2006 providing resources and emotional support to military families with young children coping with the challenging transitions in their lives, such as deployments and when a parent comes home changed due to combat-related injury.