By Ian Shantz
Published September 2023
After being put on the back burner out of pure necessity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Working Centre’s Community Dental Clinic is once again open.
This news has The Working Centre Director Joe Mancini smiling.
Food and housing became the immediate priorities throughout the pandemic. Those needs combined with complexities surrounding health regulations, led to the dental clinic, which had been operating since 2014, being temporarily shuttered in 2020.
“We were always committed to it,” Mancini said. “It was only in the last year that we were able to start planning out how to put our resources towards that.”
A significant portion of those resources came courtesy of GreenShield’s GSC Sherry Peister Community Impact Fund held at WRCF, which effectively allowed The Working Centre’s dental clinic to re-open in February 2023.
“It was the key ingredient,” Mancini said. “We wanted to have a little bit of a base of funding. The clinic operates with volunteer dentists and hygienists, but we do employ a dental assistant who serves as the office manager. That was the one role we needed to get things going. When that was confirmed, that was a bit of a relief that we could move forward.”
The funding allowed The Working Centre to hire a dental assistant who performs the role of full-time clinic coordinator. They were also able to purchase dental software that allows for easy documentation of services.
“What I have seen in the experiences of folks I walk with through dental care is it gives them a feeling of hope that they can turn things around. Appearance is big to everyone. So having nice teeth again whether that’s with the dentist fixing the ones that are fixable or doing extraction to prepare them for dentures. This provides people with confidence, better self esteem and most importantly better over all heath.” (Working Centre Outreach Worker).
Our gratitude to GreenShield and WRCF for supporting this project. And we are grateful for the dentists and hygienists who lovingly do this work. We welcome more dental professionals.
In the period between March 1st to June 30th there were 110 appointments for services like New Patient Exams, Restorations, Extractions, Fillings, Emergencies, and Cleanings. Root Canals were first offered in early July.
We are grateful for the 7 volunteer dentists:
Dr. Yasmin Al-latar, Dr. Sandy Tse, Dr. Glynn Manchester, Dr. Chhavi Saxina, Dr. Lauren Doherty, Dr. Eethar Noureen, Dr. Mernoush Ghobady.
Dr. Kerr Banduk, retired dentist, is our main recruiter of dentists and he provides oversight to the clinic.
We also thank dental hygienists Zohra Zakhizada, Jessica Harlock, Krista Kneisel and Nory Gamboa for their work at the clinic.
