• Home
  • Australian Dental Outreach Foundation Inc

Australian Dental Outreach Foundation Inc

6 March 2019 UCF Comments Off

Grow up Smiling – “GuS” – programme materials
The Australian Dental Outreach Foundation Inc (ADOFI) provides mobile dental treatment and related services across metropolitan, regional and remote Australia and partners with facilities, including schools, to provide care to those in greatest need. It is an entirely voluntary orgnisation.

The Foundation strives to provide oral care to the most needy members of the community across Australia, who suffer the greatest burden of disease – often with the poorest access to dental care. Such patients include children, the disabled and seriously ill.

To ensure sustainable outcomes, a dental management plan for each patient, with regular follow up, is undertaken. Ongoing training and mentoring of key personnel is also provided, in particular for regional and remote local communities, on oral health advocacy. Dental outreach has serviced more than 250 facilities (schools, kindies, aged care facilities and nursing homes) across Australia comprising a patient population of more than 15,000 people.

ADOFI applied for a small grant to enable the continuation and expansion of the outreach oral health care treatment services  to an additional 15 sites (470 patients) with their Grow Up Smiling (“GuS”) programme.

The focus of the GuS programme are children aged 2 – 17 years of age, located across Australia, in lower socio-economic areas and in significant need of dental care.

The programme is staffed by an entirely voluntary team of dental clinicians, assistants, etc.

The grant would purchase materials utilized for treatment and in particular will focus on disposables such as gloves, masks, autoclave packaging and bibs.

This grant contribution will enable 470 patients to be examined/treated by voluntary dentists – thereby improving their oral health and quality of life, and removing financial/temporal/lifestyle costs associated with them having to travel up to several hours to another community that has a local dentist able to treat them.

UCF directors were pleased to award a grant of $2,000 for this important health programme.