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
