Technical Report - Donegal Traveller's Project

Health Survey Findingsthey could not pay for the care, compared with 19.1% of ROI Travellers and 28.6% of NI Travellerswho indicated that their children did not receive care because of this reason. This disproportionatehealthcare threat to Traveller children is notable. Given the high number of medical card holders in theTraveller community, this is an unexpected finding, but it may reflect the number of Travellers whosemedical cards are not current or are in the process of being applied for.With regard to specific medical problems, Table 8 shows the relative frequencies of sight, hearing andspeech problems within the 5-year-olds in the AITHS and the Lifeways medical card holder families,while Table 9 shows these frequencies in the 9-year-old AITHS children and the 9-year-old SC 5 or6 children in the NLSC/GUI 3 . The Traveller groups report higher rates of such problems than thecomparable populations.Table 247: Ever had or has a specific health problem, in the 5-year-old groupHealth concernROI Travellers(n=507)NI Travellers(n=60)Lifeways medical cardholders(n=199)Eye problem 15.5% 23.3% 5.4%Hearing problem 12.4% 11.9% 4.3%Speech problem 15.1% 18.6% 9.8%Table 248: Ever had or has a specific health problem, in the 9-year-old groupHealth concernROI Travellers(n=388)NI Travellers(n=64)NLSC SC 5-6(n=1,114)Eye problem 17.6% 28.2% 17.1%Hearing problem 12.9% 22.3% 8.3%Speech problem 13.5% 18.8% 7.5%3The different prevalences of problems noted may be partly explained by the different data items collected. InAITHS, the parents were asked whether the child ever had or currently has an eye, hearing or speech problem;in NLSC/GUI, the parents were asked if the child ever had a sight or hearing or speech problem which neededcorrection, and whether the child had a speech problem; and in Lifeways, the parents were asked whether theLifeways child had these issues as ‘ongoing problems’. The definition of the eye, hearing or speech problem inquestion was left to the parent or guardian’s own interpretation in all 3 studies.197