Dawson County Schools recently partnered with Help a Child Smile to provide free dental care to 96 Dawson County children.

According to Janice Darnell, Executive Director of Instructional Support and Student Services for the School System, the idea of ​​working with the program began with conversations between the school nurses.

“One of the things our school nurses noticed was students who came to the nurse because they had mouth pain,” Darnell said. “I didn’t even know this existed, but the director of our student health service did.” Art pointed this out to me and said, “Are you going to take a closer look at this?”

After much research and discussions with the school nurses, Darnell was able to help bring the Help a Child Smile mobile dentist bus into the school system. Children in Dawson County schools were able to pre-register and volunteer dentists provided dental work in the mobile dental office.

“The dentists are volunteers from all over the state, but some are retired and some are still in active practice donating a day or two each month, but they’re all ADA certified,” Darnell said. “They’re going to do all the services except orthodontics or orthodontic surgery or oral surgery, but basic dental care or something like a basic filling that they can take care of.”

Darnell said the program can make a huge difference for students whose parents may not be able to afford dental care.

“They are like a drug, for example, but it makes it harder to find a provider for children in situations like this. So it’s really great that even transportation is not a problem in this case,” said Darnell. “Our nurses are trained to do the initial screening, but that way we can actually follow up to provide this six month service.”

According to Darnell, a large proportion of the students who received dental care were those who had also taken the program that fall. There were also several students who were new to the program, which encouraged them and the other organizers of the program.

“Many of these students who were seen in the spring were re-runs from the fall and there for their six-month exam, but some of them were brand new too,” Darnell said. “It’s a great program. We were just very satisfied with the product and the participation. “

Darnell said the hope for the further program is to keep growing so that the bus can come every 6 months and stay in the county for a full day to serve even more people.

“We hope we can continue to do this and we hope our participation rates increase,” said Darnell. “We are very excited and hope that not only can we continue, but that we can expand the program to include these services for our families as well.”

For more information on the Help a Child Smile program, visit https://www.hcsga.com/.