Victorian school students will have brighter smiles and hard-working families will avoid hefty dental bills, thanks to free dental care being rolled out at all Victorian public primary and secondary schools.<\/p>\n
The Victorian Budget 2019\/20 provides $321.9 million for the Andrews Labor Government\u2019s free dental care, as promised, with the first school dental vans to hit the road later this year.<\/p>\n
Oral disease is one of the most common and expensive diseases to treat, but it\u2019s also the most preventable. Across Australia, a quarter of all children have untreated tooth decay; and in Victoria, dental conditions are the highest single cause of preventable hospitalisations for kids under 10.<\/p>\n
The new fleet of dental vans will start visiting schools in Box Hill, Barwon South, Cranbourne and Wodonga in Term 3 this year, and will be rolled out to all Victorian public schools by 2022.<\/p>\n
The Smile Squad vans will provide free check-ups and treatment including teeth cleaning, fluoride applications, fillings, root canals and any other non-cosmetic treatments to make sure our kids have healthy teeth.<\/p>\n
All Victorian public primary and secondary school students will receive their own free dental packs, complete with a toothbrush, and lots of education about the benefits of a healthy, bright smile.<\/p>\n
The Labor Government\u2019s landmark free dental care program will drive down big dental costs for families, with bills expected to be slashed by $400 each year for each kid. It will also free up more than 100,000 places for adults in the public dental system each year, reducing wait times.<\/p>\n
The full fleet of Smile Squad vans will hit the road by 2022, providing free check-ups and dental treatment for about 650,000 school kids every year. Around 500 dentists, oral health therapists and dental assistants will be employed to staff the vans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victorian school students will have brighter smiles and hard-working families will avoid hefty dental bills, thanks to free dental care being rolled out at all Victorian public primary and secondary schools. The Victorian Budget 2019\/20 provides $321.9 million for the Andrews Labor Government\u2019s free dental care, as promised, with the first school dental vans to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-releases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9359,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions\/9359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabriellewilliams.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}