The British Dental Association has urged a new team at the Department of Health and Social Care to step up and offer full support to colleagues treating patients in our hospitals, as it threw its weight behind the mum of seven-year-old Philip, a non-verbal autistic child from Macclesfield, who has spent almost four months living with a painful dental abscess while waiting for “urgent” dental treatment.
Philip’s mother, Hayley Bramhall, is fighting for SEN children facing eye watering waits, and has launched a petition calling for a maximum 12-week wait for SEN children requiring urgent dental treatment under sedation or general anaesthetic, increased surgical capacity, and greater accountability for delays that leave vulnerable children in prolonged pain. [1] While Philip has waited months, Hayley reports other SEN children waiting years.
The Government has long focused attention on the fact decay remains the number one reason for hospital admissions among young children. However, while there has been a welcome upstream focus on preventive programmes like supervised brushing to bring down demand longer term, there has been no clear government effort to bring down these huge backlogs across secondary and community care. Efforts to improve access to ‘urgent’ care on the high street have also generated negligible results. [2]
A large proportion of paediatric extractions are impossible to deliver on the high street and need to take place within Community Dental Services, where government has failed to disclose waiting times, despite gathering data for nearly a year. [3] Across dentistry, year-long waits for hospital extractions can be the norm, and the BDA has stressed a new team at the Department of Health and Social Care must turn the page, with full waiting list transparency, and appropriate support and priority for those on the coalface, often treating some of the most vulnerable patients in society.
The BDA is aware of Trusts asking their dental teams to down drills and free up theatre space to help them better hit government targets for other procedures. [4] The professional body stresses that dentists are often fighting a losing battle for priority, and access to theatre space must not be treated as a zero-sum game by officials.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) landmark State of Child Health report, which looks at the health of children across 12 indicators, warned this month that the UK is raising one of the unhealthiest generations in decades. The report stressed that tooth decay in children is entirely preventable, yet remains highly prevalent in England, affecting 22% of five-year-olds in 2024, with progress stalling since 2020, driving hospital admissions and disproportionately affecting children in more deprived communities. The cost to the NHS of tooth extractions among children aged in England was an estimated at a least £74.8 million in 2024.
BDA Chair Eddie Crouch said:
"The Government has no shortage of soundbites on the tens of thousands of children ending up in hospital for dental extractions. But many kids facing year-long waits have yet to get anything that looks like real support from Westminster.
"The reality is shocking waiting list data is getting buried, with dentists being told to down tools to help hospitals hit other government targets.
"What we're not seeing is the openness and resources to tackle this.”
“These aren’t just statistics, they are kids waiting months or even years struggling to eat, to sleep and to learn.
“These include some of our most vulnerable patients, children like Philip who cannot always communicate their pain. They deserve so much better.”