Language Difficulties and Health Consequences for Older Italian-Australians in Ascot Vale

Abstract

A qualitative needs analysis, undertaken with 33 older Italian-Australians living in Ascot Vale, identified a number of language related difficulties that had actual or potential health consequences. Indeed health services utilisation was a problem for most participants and although they all attended a general practitioner, there was usually little or no contact with agencies that provide home care, support or health enhancing information, either because of a lack of awareness on the part of participants or because they believed the services were linguistically (or culturally) inappropriate. Language support, at best, was provided by family members because the health interpreter service was rarely used. The findings suggest a lack of structural and practitioner commitment to addressing the language needs of LOTE immigrants, especially: the current financial and administrative disincentives to community based practitioners using the health interpreter services; an apparent lack of commitment on the part of health workers to use the health interpreter services; and a failure to develop mechanisms for providing them with health related information. It appears that the equity debates of the 1970s that focused on language barriers should be revisited, because the findings of this study suggest language competence is a necessary prerequisite to these older participants effectively accessing health related information or services, or participating, either individually or collectively, in the planning or implementation of their health care.