Vietnamese Immigrants in Brisbane, Australia: Perception of Parenting Roles, Child Development, Child Health, Illness, and Disability, and Health Service Utilisation

Table 1

Focus group findings.

Issue	Vietnamese	Australian
Health Services	Primarily GP^1	Use community health services and GP
	Satisfied with GP	Less satisfied with GP
	Difficulty accessing community health services because of transportation problems; want home visits	Want community centres to run fathers’ groups
Roles of health professionals	Understood roles of GP, and paediatrician	Understood roles of GP, paediatrician, CHN^2, PT^3
	Confused roles of psychologist and psychiatrist	Confused roles of psychologist and psychiatrist
	Did not know roles of PT, OT^4, SLP^5, CHN, and SW^6	Did not know roles of OT, SLP, and SW
Child Development	Offered child(ren) variety of toys	Emphasis on educational toys
	Solid food introduced same time as Caucasian group
	Allowed child to feed independently later for fear of mess
Parenting	Preferred explanation for discipline rather than spanking	Mostly infants so discipline not as relevant
Causation of chronic medical conditions, and disabilities
Asthma	Cold, wind, allergies	Genetics, environment, grass, sand
Mental Illness	Trauma, use of OCP^7, previous abortion, Karma	Genetics, stress
Epilepsy	Don’t know	Genetics, trauma, drugs
ADHD^8	Don’t know	Social factors, parenting, foods, preservatives
CP^9	Don’t know	Genetics, inutero problems, vitamin deficiencies

¹General Practitioner, ²Community Health Nurse, ³Physiotherapist, ⁴Occupational therapist, ⁵Speech and Language Pathologist, ⁶Social Worker, ⁷Oral contraceptive pill, ⁸Attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome, ⁹Cerebral Palsy.