The Quality Of Life Of Trash Pickers' Children In Rawa Kucing Tangerang

Abstract

The quality of life of children is one of the achievement targets on human development and poverty eradication, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Quality of life is one of the indicators of child’s health and well-being that are currently considered to be more accurate than the child mortality rate. Tangerang, one of the closest areas to Jakarta as a capital city of Indonesia, is recorded to have approximately 340 residents working as trash picker and dwelling in a landfill. Trash pickers are mostly identical with poverty and nonhygiene

circumstances. Thus, the purpose of this study was to profile the quality of life of trash pickers’ children. The quality of life was measured with an instrument of translated and validated KINDL questionnaire. KINDL has six domains including physical health, emotional health, family functioning, self-esteem, social functioning and cognitive functioning. The participants were 42 parents (mostly the mothers) working as trash picker with children aged between 4-7 years old in Rawa Kucing landfill, Tangerang. This study indicated the various results among KINDL domains in the quality of life of trash pickers’ children. Social functioning was found to be better than other domains while the cognitive functioning was indicated as the most difficult domain to cope in terms of education and assignment from regular school. This profile of the quality of life of trash pickers’ children will be used for further in-depth studies on the health-related quality of life in children from other domains for enhancing the improvement of human resources quality for better well being.