The British Dental Association has applauded the rollout of supervised brushing in early years settings in England. The policy, launching today, will target hundreds of thousands of 3–5-year-olds in the most deprived areas from April.
In a break from the recently launched policy of 700,000 urgent dental appointments – which is funded by recycling the existing dental budget - the BDA understands schemes will be funded directly via the public health grant.
The professional body has expressed relief that the schemes are receiving a dedicated revenue stream, that is not conditional on the crisis in NHS dentistry persisting. Earlier this year the BDA had pointed to new research, that indicated that funding remained the number one barrier to uptake, with 4 in 10 English councils not currently able to afford to implement them.
The BDA has been a long-term champion of this policy, that official modelling suggests will itself through reduced treatment need. While there has been a postcode lottery of provision in England, dedicated national programmes have been running in Scotland since 2006 and in Wales since 2009, elements of which have been exported worldwide.
The fundamentals of supervised brushing programmes were developed by pioneering dentists working in London and the East of England in the late Victorian Era.
The BDA says it reflects the attitude to oral health among successive governments that it has taken this long to reach a national rollout. It says that having made this important first step the new administration has a responsibility to go further and faster, both on restoring access to services and on prevention, particularly through mandatory action on the food industry on marketing, labelling and reformulation of food and drink.
BDA Chair Eddie Crouch said:
“It’s rare to find something to smile about in dentistry these days.
“But supervised tooth brushing is tried and tested policy that will save children from pain and our NHS a fortune.
“The only concern is why it’s taken a century to get here. Ministers need to go further and faster.”