Govt appears confused over grommets

16/02/2013 12:16:30 p.m.

tin man wrote:

You don't need your hearing or to be literate to work long hours in loud noisy factories. The govt know just what they are doing?

15/02/2013 5:50:40 p.m.

Margaret wrote:

Re your article last night about ‘grommets’. The first few years of life are when a child acquires language. The child hears, listens and copies sounds and speech. If a child cannot hear well during this time he/she will not learn to speak well. Hearing and identifying sounds in speech is an essential ‘pre-reading’ skill. Without this skill a child will have difficulty in learning to read. So are we really going to deny a child a simple, cheap procedure that will allow them to hear well during this most crucial time and instead pay many thousands of dollars more, over many years in dealing with the resulting problems with speech and learning to read? All of which means the child starts their schooling hugely disadvantaged and in many cases go on to have lifelong negative consequences. I am surprised to hear that this procedure is less common in the UK that in NZ. Things must have gone steeply downhill since I left Scotland. Both of my children had grommets fitted (the eldest twice) on the NHS with no great wait time. During many years working in the Scottish education system I was aware of many, many children who had grommets fitted. Ministers and ministries need to wake up to the fact that what happens to a child during their first six years will in most cases affect them for the rest of their life. Choosing not to act early is a very false economy.

15/02/2013 3:16:39 p.m.

alison wrote:

Sounds like govt incompetence again giving the same job to 2 different govt organisations to monitor. Total waste of taxpayers money and the outcome is still unclear but the wait times remain long and we have this conflicting information which tells us nothing. Maybe national should be held accountable for there spending.

15/02/2013 11:04:39 a.m.

Greg wrote:

This government has no idea's what its doing. Groumets are a drop in the bucket when compared to Helens greatest bribe to the middle class with working for families welfare. Drop that massive cost of 3 billion and introduce split income tax. GST was suppose to reduce PAYE tax, thats hardly been reduced has it. We need a bottom up fix to kick start the economy, trickle down economics doesnt work.

15/02/2013 9:09:12 a.m.

Vanessa Hunt wrote:

Make sure your kids are on your healthcare policy should have one.