"Dental check"

Hello cepheusey75 and thank you for taking the time to share your experience of attending a Smiling Starts education session at Lollipops in Wanneroo with your 2-year-old.

We are sorry to hear that your experience was disorganised and that your child did not have the fun and positive experience of care that we aim to provide at every Smiling Starts session. We pride ourselves on being child friendly and building a positive association with dental care, so it is disappointing to hear that we did not achieve that on this occasion.

Smiling Starts is a new program, investigating different ways of providing care in places that feel comfortable and safe for families. As we are new, it is important for us to get feedback such as yours so that we are able to learn about what works best for children and families with whom we engage. Your feedback highlighted several opportunities to improve how we organise and deliver our sessions. We have investigated your feedback and, are introducing the following improvements:

Introducing a number system so that we can provide clarity over the order of care and to provide clearer communication to parents and carers about anticipated wait times; and Encouraging families to pre-register for the sessions to help us anticipate attendance and to allow us to better manage wait times.

You also raised an important point about the order in which education and dental checks are delivered, particularly when caring for very young children. As part of our ongoing service improvement, we will review how we sequence education and clinical activities in playcentres to ensure our approach supports a positive experience for children, whilst ensuring we have the information required to provide safe and appropriate clinical care. We are also continuing to evaluate how different settings, including playcentres, can best be used to support our program's goals of improving oral health knowledge and helping children develop positive early experiences of dental care.

We are pleased to hear that you felt the staff doing the dental check were lovely. I know they will be pleased to hear that although there are elements that we can improve in terms of how we deliver care, that their kindness did not go unnoticed. Thank you for sharing this.

If you would like to provide further information about your perspective and any further suggestions about how we can improve our services, please contact us on SmilingStarts@health.wa.gov.au or call us on 1800 939 666.

Thank you again for providing feedback and I sincerely apologise that your interaction with our service did not meet the standard of care you expected and deserved.

Kind regards

Dr Joanne Stephenson

Regional Dental Officer- Smiling Starts