Greg Hunt urges families to use new toolkit and prevent hearing problems early

FEDERAL Health Minister Greg Hunt is calling on Indigenous families in the NT to use a new toolkit to help identify children’s hearing problems early

• Hearing health epidemic limiting Indigenous NT kids’ educational opportunities
• Health workers voice concerns of NT’s hearing heath crisis

FEDERAL Health Minister Greg Hunt is calling on Indigenous families in the Territory to use a simple new toolkit to help identify children’s hearing problems early on.

In the Northern Territory, nine in 10 Indigenous kids in remote communities have a chronic ear infection, which researchers fear is limiting their educational opportunities.

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The commonwealth has committed about $104m over the next three years for initiatives to reduce the number of Indigenous Aussies suffering avoidable hearing loss.

Mr Hunt said an additional $5m had also just been committed to embed the use of new tools developed by Hearing Australia — the Parent-evaluated Listening and Understanding Measure (PLUM) and the Hearing and Talking Scale (HATS). “PLUM and HATS uses questionnaires that help parents and carers, early childhood educators and health professionals to screen for hearing and communication difficulties in young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and ensure action can be taken to address problems early,” he said.

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“Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services will be able to access $2 million from that funding, through the Service Maintenance Program, to establish quiet spaces that can be used for audiology assessments.”

It comes following revelations that thousands of Aboriginal children in the Territory had outstanding referrals to have their ears checked or problems last year.

More information about PLUM and HATS is available online at plumandhats.nal.gov.au

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