VOHA developed and submitted a Victorian Budget submission in late June this year, aimed at influencing the October Budget. VOHA proposed a significant Catch-up program, in parallel with a recognition of the increased levels of both demand and of heightened costs of everyday care in new environment.

In particular:

• Funding of a Catch-up program to treat all those who missed out on care during the pandemic, as soon as restrictions are sufficiently lifted. (Estimated cost $40 million)
• Achievement of this through both funding existing public services (utilising spare capacity) as well as outsourcing care to the private sector, where appropriate, to speed up service delivery and support the Victorian economy.
• Increased funding to accommodate the increased number of Victorians who will now be eligible for public dental care in 20/21 due to loss of income/work. (Potentially 200,000, with estimated cost $20 million)
• Acknowledgement of the increased costs of providing care post-pandemic and associated increase in funding for continuing dental care (e.g. reduced throughput and increased costs of extra PPE). This should apply to both public agency funding agreements and the funding of voucher schemes. (Incidentally, it should be noted that the Victorian voucher schemes have consistently remained the lowest in the country and are in dire need of review). (Estimated cost $10 million p.a.)
• Funding requirements to allow services to be much more flexible in how they provide care in their own contexts, including teledentistry, and the expansion of outreach work that can enable many disadvantaged groups to access necessary care (when they still show reluctance to recontact services or are residents in medium to high dependency aged care).
• Immediate commencement of planning to ensure services have access to sufficient secure, stable and affordable PPE supplies from a wider range of credible suppliers to cope with future unpredictable emergencies.

Before the pandemic struck, VOHA had decided to focus in 2019-20 on advocating for increased access to public oral health care for adults. It was agreed that the Government had made a significant investment in children’s oral health at the November 2018 Victorian election through its promised School Dental Van Program the ‘Smile Squad’. It was accepted that this would naturally be a key focus of the Government’s next Budget too.
 
VOHA has subsequently agreed that, until the school vans program is established, it would continue to focus specifically on the needs of adults requiring oral health care. Waiting lists for general care for adults were still rising even before the pandemic, and the needs among eligible Victorians are obviously now even higher, much of them unmet.
 
VOHA has therefore now refreshed its policy position to reflect this, a copy of the new Policy Position Statement is available HERE.

The smilesquad.vic.gov.au website (last updated August 2019) describes Smile Squad as:

A Victorian Government program that will provide all Victorian public primary and secondary school students with free dental care. Dental vans start visiting a limited number of schools in the pilot phase from Term 3 2019, with the full Victorian roll-out commencing from Term 1, 2020.

A February media release (11/2/20) from Education Minister James Merlino announced: 146 new primary and secondary schools will be invited to join the Smile Squad program in 2020 in Campaspe, East Gippsland, Macedon Ranges, Maribyrnong, Melton, Wangaratta and parts of Casey and Hume Smile Squad vans are also visiting schools in Brimbank, Buloke, Greater Bendigo, Hepburn, Latrobe, Mansfield, and Towong, joining schools in South Barwon, Box Hill, Cranbourne and Wodonga that received a visit last year. An extra 300 schools will be invited to participate, involving more than 100,000 additional Victorian students. The program, along with much of the non-emergency public dental care, has however been put on hold during the pandemic and will resume as soon as feasible.

VOHA acknowledges it is still early days for Smile Squad and the Victorian Government is clearly focused on building up the program over the next year or so. Whilst VOHA congratulated the Government at the time on its planned investment in children’s oral health, VOHA and members individually have also shared some concerns about the design of the program and its implications for family-based care and the likely effectiveness of health education when no parents are present. However, more positively, it would appear that some aspects of the original design have evolved over time into more feasible approaches. In qualitative terms, however, VOHA does not yet have a full sense of how the implementation is progressing to date and the degree to which desired goals are being achieved. VOHA is therefore waiting and watching before we offer any further constructive feedback on its strengths and weaknesses.