This comes as new data from NHS Digital shows 4.9 million children didn’t attend a dentist last year, including 6 in 10 1-4 year olds (57.7% or around 1 million of that age group).
The BDA has long advocated that England follows the lead set by devolved governments, including bringing supervised brushing to schools and nurseries.
Elements of these programmes have been borrowed by governments from Chile to Israel. The Childsmile (Scotland) and Designed to Smile (Wales) programmes contain a range of universal and targeted interventions, have been huge successes, and have shaved millions off NHS treatment costs.
The Conservatives pledged to act on child oral health inequalities in their 2017 manifesto. However the Government’sStarting Well programme has no new funding attached, and is operating in a handful of local authorities in England.
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