News and Events

2005 Media Releases

CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE - One size doesn’t fit all

Australian health care providers should do more to recognise the needs of the 21st century family, according to La Trobe University researcher, Dr Fiona Andrews.

General practitioners, health centres, dentists, and others should all become more flexible because of evidence that some children’s health may be at risk due to difficulties in accessing services.

This is because over the last 50 years there have been significant changes in families’ working arrangements with the growing trend for women returning to paid work after the birth of their children.

Balancing the needs of work and family has become a subject of much debate. But, says Dr Andrews, the situation is far from simple because the problem of child health care is not the same for all families.

‘We know that pre-school children are the second greatest users of health care after people aged 65 and over. Young kids are susceptible to frequent episodes of minor ill health as well as requiring preventative health care such as immunisation and regular health assessments to detect any developmental delay. But we don’t know very much about how families manage this health care’.

Dr Andrews is a project officer for the Australian Institute for Primary Care housed at La Trobe’s Melbourne (Bundoora) campus and also lectures in the School of Public Health. She holds a PhD in biomedical research, but researched the needs of mothers in the City of Whittlesea as her Master of Health Science degree research project.

For this she conducted in-depth interviews with 15 mothers, seven working 30 hours or more each week and eight at home full-time, each with at least one child under five years of age.

She found that a number of the mothers had difficulty in accessing health services but the reasons for this, which included time and financial constraints, were diverse. The health services included not only GPs, maternal and child health nurses and dentists but also allied health practitioners such as speech pathologists and audiologists.

She says some working mothers were unable to take their children to health care providers through lack of time during the day, suggesting that more after hour services were desirable. Others, at home full time, failed to access health care because they could not afford it, suggesting the need for more bulk billing and other low cost services.

‘I need to emphasise that my research took place in one municipality, and a growth corridor at that, and that the information acquired reflected the situation in late 2003 and early 2004 when the interviews took place,’ Dr Andrews said.

‘But it all adds up to a need for more family friendly health services. Health care providers, subject like all of us to political and work issues, should respond to the need of contemporary families while realising that family needs are different and that “one size does not fit all”,’ Dr Andrews concluded.

For further information:

Contact: Dr Fiona Andrews, Tel: (03) 9479 5987 or Email: f.andrews@latrobe.edu.au