Turner slams lack of school dental service planning

United Future deputy leader Judy Turner today said there was absolutely no excuse for the shortage of dental nurses that has thrown school dental services into chaos.

“This is a simple maths problem. We know how many children are coming into schools; we know how many dental nurses are in service and we therefore know how many we need to have in training,” Mrs Turner, United Future’s health spokeswoman, said.

“There is simply no excuse for this not being in place, but we regularly come across this kind of flawed reasoning as if these things take us by surprise. It is not acceptable.

“We appear to have officials who have forgotten how to count - and as a result we have a school dental system that is falling over as we speak and children with mouths full of rotting teeth.

“Again, no forethought is apparent in the way we set these things up and there is certainly no sense of a nation valuing its young and their health,” Mrs Turner said.

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