Last updated: September 2026
This is written for the person making the booking. Sometimes that is the patient. Often it is a daughter, a partner, a support worker or a house supervisor, working out how to get someone to a dentist when the last attempt did not go well or when nobody has managed it in years.
The appointment itself is rarely the hard part. The hard part is everything arranged around it, and almost all of that can be sorted out on the phone beforehand. What follows is what to ask for and what to tell us, so the visit is planned rather than survived.
When you ring, the diagnosis is the least useful thing you can give us. Two autistic adults can need completely different appointments. Two people with dementia can need opposite approaches. What actually changes how we run the visit is the specific detail, and the person arranging the booking usually has all of it.
Worth having ready:
None of this needs to be a formal document. A list on your phone is fine. The point is that the appointment is designed before anyone walks in.
The default booking behaviour is to take whatever is offered soonest. For these appointments the slot itself is part of the treatment plan.
First appointment of the day. We open at 8:30am Monday to Saturday. The first slot means the waiting room is at its emptiest, the practice is not running behind yet, and nobody has spent the morning building up to it. For sensory-sensitive patients this is usually the most useful adjustment available, and it costs nothing.
Last appointment of the day. For some patients this works better than the morning, and for the same reason: a quiet practice with less coming and going. We run until 6:00pm on weekdays and 5:00pm on Saturday.
Saturday. Open 8:30am to 5:00pm. This matters where the person who needs to bring the patient is working weekdays, or where a family member who is the only one the patient will travel with can only do weekends. A great many dental visits do not happen because the transport does not exist on a Tuesday.
Longer than standard. Ask for extra time. An appointment with room in it for breaks, for repeating an explanation, for a patient to get out of the chair and come back, is a different experience from one running to a routine schedule. Say at booking that the appointment needs more time and it gets built into the diary.
For patients living with dementia, the timing question is more individual. Some are clearest and most settled in the morning; for others a mid-afternoon appointment goes better. The carer usually knows the pattern, and that knowledge should decide the booking.
You can come in without having any treatment. This is a real appointment type, not a favour, and for many patients it is what makes the second visit possible.
A familiarisation visit means walking in, seeing the waiting area, meeting the dentist and the assistant who will be treating, looking at the room, sitting in the chair if that is comfortable, perhaps having the chair tilted back, and then leaving. Nothing goes in the mouth unless the patient wants it to.
Ask for it specifically when you ring, so it is booked as its own appointment rather than compressed into the start of a treatment visit. If it helps to take photographs of the room, the chair and the person doing the treatment to look at at home beforehand, take them. Plenty of families build a simple picture sequence of the visit from those, and it works.
Access details are worth checking before the day rather than discovering in the car park.
There is parking on site at 59 Wicklow Avenue, close to the entrance. Two things follow from that which matter more than they might sound. The distance from the car to the door is short, which is the difference between manageable and not for someone with limited mobility or someone who has to be coaxed in. And you can arrive early and wait in the car rather than in the waiting room, which for a lot of anxious and autistic patients removes the worst part of the visit entirely. Ring us from the car park and we will come and get you when the room is ready.
Entry is step-free, the treatment rooms accommodate a wheelchair, and there are accessible bathroom facilities. If a transfer to the dental chair is involved, tell us at booking how it is usually done and how many people are needed, so the room and the time are set up for it instead of being improvised.
If you are travelling by public transport, Croydon Station is on the Lilydale line: outbound the order runs Ringwood, Ringwood East, Croydon, then Mooroolbark and Lilydale. Coming from Heathmont or Bayswater means the Belgrave line and a change at Ringwood, which is a genuine consideration when a change of trains is itself the difficult part of the journey. Worth planning that leg before the appointment day, not on it.
We also see patients from supported accommodation, disability day programs and aged care services across the Maroondah area, and we are happy to talk to support staff directly. If a house supervisor or support coordinator wants to ring beforehand to check details, that is a normal call for us to take, not an imposition.
The practical adjustments matter more than the sympathy does.
Records are taken with an intraoral scanner rather than impression material, which is a small detail with a large effect for this group. Where a denture, a splint or a crown needs an impression, a handheld wand and a couple of minutes replaces a tray of setting putty held in the mouth. For a patient with a strong gag reflex, sensory sensitivity or limited ability to signal distress, that removes one of the harder procedures from the list.
It is worth being precise here, because families are often given a vague impression of what is available and then find out on the day.
What we provide is oral sedation, medication taken before the appointment that reduces anxiety while the patient remains conscious and able to respond, and local anaesthetic, which numbs the area being treated. Oral sedation suits patients who can cooperate enough to take the medication and who need help managing anxiety rather than needing to be unaware of the procedure. Anyone having it needs someone to bring them and take them home afterwards, and should not drive that day.
What we do not do here is deeper sedation or general anaesthetic. For patients who cannot tolerate treatment in a dental chair even with oral sedation, that is a referral to an appropriate facility, arranged by us but performed elsewhere. It is worth knowing this at the outset. If a general anaesthetic is clearly going to be needed, the sensible plan is often to consolidate all the necessary treatment into that one episode rather than making several attempts in the chair first.
The choice is made with the patient where possible, with their carer or decision maker, and in light of the medical history. Where the patient has a treating team elsewhere, at Maroondah Hospital on Mount Dandenong Road or with a specialist physician, we can write to them before planning treatment. More detail sits on our special needs dentistry page.
Predictability tends to matter more than reassurance. Knowing the sequence, seeing the room in advance, having the same clinician and keeping the routine identical each visit all do more than being told there is nothing to worry about. Ask what will be done in what order and relay it beforehand in whatever format works. Sensory detail is worth specifying: the taste and texture of polishing paste, the water spray, the light, the smell of the surgery, the feeling of gloved hands. Any of these can be adjusted or avoided if we know about it in advance.
Shorter and more frequent generally beats long and thorough. Book at the time of day the person is usually most settled, keep the same room and the same faces, and have the familiar carer present. Bring a current medication list, since dry mouth from medication is a major driver of decay in this group and it is manageable once identified. If dentures are worn, mention how well they still fit; weight loss changes fit, and a denture that has become loose is a common and fixable reason someone has stopped eating properly. Our seniors dentistry page covers more of this, and the article on dental care after seventy goes into the age-related changes.
Anxiety in an adult is usually a memory rather than an irrational fear, and the person often knows exactly which appointment it dates from. Saying so at the start is worth doing. It also helps to separate what is being feared: pain, loss of control, being judged for the state of the teeth, or the cost. They call for different responses. Nobody here is interested in commenting on how long it has been. Our article on managing dental anxiety covers the practical side, and a first visit can be an examination and a conversation with no treatment at all.
Tell us about transfers, about how long the patient can comfortably stay in one position, and about anything that makes lying back difficult, including breathing and reflux. Where a medical condition affects dental planning, we would rather liaise with the treating doctor first than discover the constraint mid-treatment.
For patients who cannot easily report pain, the whole approach has to shift toward finding problems early instead of reacting to complaints. A toothache that only shows up as a change in behaviour, refusing food or new agitation, has usually been present for some time. That is the argument for uneventful visits at shorter intervals rather than waiting until something is obviously wrong.
Daily care is where the outcome is actually decided, and it is often the hardest part of a carer role. Practical help we can give includes recommending an adapted toothbrush, whether that is electric, modified-grip or three-sided, sorting out toothpaste that is tolerable in flavour and texture, showing assisted brushing positions that work for one person helping another, applying fluoride varnish, and setting a check-up interval that suits the risk rather than a default six months. Our check-ups and cleans page covers the routine visit, and childrens dentistry covers younger patients.
We will not quote treatment we have not examined, but we will put the plan in writing with itemised costs before anything proceeds, which is what you need if a funding request is involved.
NDIS participants are welcome. Dental treatment may be funded through a plan where the dental need is directly related to or significantly affected by the disability, and whether it applies depends on the individual plan and how it is managed. Your plan manager or support coordinator is the person who can answer that, and we can supply written plans and quotes to support a claim. Health fund rebates are claimed through HICAPS at the practice, and we hold preferred provider status at the top tier with each major fund; details are on our private health insurance page.
Ring (03) 9725 8040 and say at the start of the call that the appointment needs some planning. That sentence changes the conversation, and it means the right amount of time is set aside rather than the standard amount. You can also book online, though for a first visit of this kind the phone is usually better, because the useful detail does not fit in a form.
We are at 59 Wicklow Avenue, Croydon, with parking on site, step-free entry and Saturday appointments. Full detail on the service is on our special needs dentistry page, and you are welcome to contact us with questions before committing to an appointment at all.
This article is general information, not personal dental advice. Treatment planning depends on an examination and on the individual medical history. NDIS funding decisions are made by the National Disability Insurance Agency and depend on the participant plan; health fund benefits are set by your fund.