Joint submission on the Provision of and Access to Dental Services in Australia
June 6, 2023
When people can’t get the dental care they need, or don’t have access to resources to assist them maintaining their own oral health as a preventative measure, it leads to debilitating social impacts that stop people from living the kind of life they want.
Down Syndrome Australia has joined with the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO), Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) and Inclusion Australia in providing a submission to the Select Committee on access to dental care.
This submission highlights oral health issues of people with disability from the perspective of the person and their individual experiences and needs, and how these needs can be more effectively met by the dental sector. Diagnosis can be important to dental care—particularly for people whose specific conditions have comorbidities associated with poorer oral health outcomes. Yet, by and large, the barriers to oral health experienced by people with disability relate to systemic issues (economic, social, political and cultural), and not a person’s disability.
In Australia, people with disability are shut out from receiving the dental care they need. Australians with disability have poorer oral health, greater unmet treatment needs and less regular dental attendance than the rest of the Australian population.
Oral health is a proxy for overall health: both are interconnected and influence the other. Not only is poor oral health linked to several chronic diseases, including stroke and cardiovascular disease, it is intimately connected to a person’s mental wellbeing.
Stories shared by people with Down syndrome and other disabilities in this submission demonstrate the negative attitudes; inaccessible and unsupportive communication; denial of basic support needs; economic, emotional, and physical cost; and long wait times they experience when trying to access the dental care they need.
Read the submission here.