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England Community Dental Services Committee

The England Community Dental Services Committee (ECDSC) is a craft committee of the BDA. It is concerned with all matters that affect those dentists in England who work within salaried primary dental care and salaried Personal Dental Service.

The England Community Dental Services Committee (ECDSC) is a craft committee of the BDA. It is concerned with all matters that affect those dentists in England who work within salaried primary dental care and salaried Personal Dental Service.


Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the Committee has worked tirelessly to support the community dental service workforce across England.

 

We worked on developing a redeployment toolkit to help colleagues manage redeployment in the early stages of the pandemic.

 

We agreed with NHS Employers that appraisals should be light-touch and have a focus on health and wellbeing. Those dentists however, that requested a full appraisal would still be entitled to that.

 

In 2020/21 we campaigned, and continue to campaign, hard on access to GA treatment for children and vulnerable adults and we wrote to the Secretary of State for Health along with MENCAP and a range of other dental stakeholders asking for action.

 

In 2021 we worked with Makaton, HEE and Learning Disability Nursing on an awareness campaign during Learning Disability Awareness week. We worked on a short video explaining how to use Makaton in the surgery/practice to help those with Learning Disabilities feel comfortable attending the dentist. A suite of resources is available on our campaign page.

 

Read our blog: Breaking down barriers to care


A process for Community Dental Services (CDS) system reform began in late 2021. NHS England has held some initial scoping meetings regarding system reform, but to date there has been little progress made. There had previously been three CDS pilots, which, like their GDS equivalents, were discontinued at the end of March 2022. We were deeply disappointed with NHS England's decision to abandon the trial. The England Community Dental Services Committee (ECDSC) Chair attended two stakeholder events in 2021 in which the implications of GDS dental system reform for the CDS were discussed. The second, long term phase of GDS dental system reform is likely to have implications for the CDS, as access to GDS services will directly impact the capacity of the CDS. We continue to ensure that the interests of CDS dentists are represented in dental system reform negotiations with NHS England. 


Looking forward, the main focus of the ECDSC is supporting community dentists with the recovery and restoration of services. The ECDSC intends to restart its work around dental care in care homes and re-visit the work on unfair patient fines which began in 2019.

 

Members

Curt McKenzie - East of England Clinician

Maynaha Indrakumar - London Clinician

Charlotte Waite (Chair) -  Midlands Clinician

Stephen Tanser - North East & Yorkshire Clinician

Linda Dunlop - North West Clinician

Meg Keddie - South East Clinician

Vacant South - West Clinician


Jancy Pope (Exec member) - Pan-England Clinician

Sarah Carr (Exec member) - Pan-England Clinician

Wendy Newman - Pan-England Clinician

Jessica Smith (Exec member)-  Pan-England Clinician

Hannah Pomeroy  - Pan-England Clinician

Giten Dabhi  - Pan-England Clinician

Vacant - Pan-England Clinician


Emma Gill - Early career Clinician

Natalie Bradley - Early career Clinician

Ronan O'Flynn - Early career Clinician


Balqees Bi (Vice Chair) - Pan-England Clinical/Assistant Director

Caroline Frolander - Pan-England Clinical/Assistant Director

Jenny Headley - Pan-England Clinical/Assistant Director

Julia Hallam-Seagrave(Exec member)-  Pan-England Clinical/Assistant Director

Richard Valle-Jones - Pan-England Clinical/Assistant Director


Contact details

If you would like further information regarding ECDSC please contact the Senior Policy Adviser for Employed Dentists Stuart Abrahams (Stuart.Abrhamas@bda.org), or the Committee Secretary Eleanor Day (Eleanor.Day@bda.org).