"Some six year olds have never seen a toothbrush"

[SuperGinger]

Just saw an article on the BBC website about this, very sad you need your teeth for the rest of your life and we are failing our children.

Why aren't they investing in children we are storing up so many problems for the future? Especially with poor diets many children have.

This study was however done in schools with no dental
lights using only mirrors with no x rays , when previous inspections were done in clinics with proper lighting and x rays etc. In the profession it's acknowledged that the real rates of decay are far higher and this was a flawed survey.

Not ‘bloody ridiculous’ at all.

the Welsh gov are willing to invest in children! Simple as that. nothing to do with giving anything to the parents. It’s quite a powerful thing if you think about it on the whole. Rather than box thinking ‘parents to lazy to buy a toothbrush get one off the taxpayers…’

they will be using tax payers money for free school meals for all soon!

Regardless of what is expected of parents, if it known there is poverty/ neglect it's the kids who are being failed.

And interventions at a you g age can make a huge difference.

But instead these services are being cut, and its the kids who need the most help who are affected.

Honestly I work in healthcare and our dental surgery waiting lists can go on for months and months. There are so many waiting we could be working with dental surgery daily if we had space. It’s a huge problem, not a new thing but has been getting worse for years. ( well before the pandemic) Education and support around teeth and how they look after them is so needed for both parents and children in many of these cases. Alongside better dental access too. Provision of toothbrushes etc if needed.

Some have one or two teeth removed.

Frequently a 2/3/4/5 year old is having the majority of their quite often black and rotting teeth removed. Some children will be starting reception with barely any teeth.
Some older children also have adult teeth removed too.

There’s a multitude of reasons: occasionally illness or medication can cause issues with teeth, learning disabilities, some people just have rubbish teeth, neglect and failure on the parents part to look after the child’s teeth and diet, lack of education on the parents part (they’ve never been taught how to look after teeth themselves) and of course access to dentists which is just getting worse.

Its not scaremongering it’s very real especially in deprived areas.

How is providing toothpaste and brushes to a child not giving anything to the feckless parents who should be providing it themselves?
Should they provide free clothes and bikes so the parents won't have to be arsed with that either?

Every government since 1992 has destroyed dentistry. It was labour who introduced the "new contract" in 2006 that is so unworkable and acknowledged by various governments as being unworkable , that it is the root cause of the collapse of dentistry in England and Wales. Scotland and NI limped on longer but now the utter lack of investment in the Cinderella dental service is causing the collapse in these countries as well.
It's not that dentistry is at the back of the queue for NHS funding we cant even see the queue.
The average spend per patient treated, including patient charges , per year is around £34 , less in some areas , slightly more in others. How much world class dentistry will that buy when a surgery in a cheap part of the country will cost around £120 an hour to run?
As a result of this the community service which used to provide dental education , school dental inspections , special needs services, sedation, general anaesthetics , care home dental services is now struggling to cope with the treatment needs of many who would previously been treated in general dental practice .

It’s also cheaper to provide those resources than pay for the theatre, ward staff, theatre staff eg anaesthetic and dental professionals that are needed to have these children admitted for dental surgery!

£1 for a pack of four

Even if you are on a low income dental care has to be top priority surely. Yes there is a shortage of NHS dentists and in most private practices if one adult is registered with them all children are then able to be seen on the NHS. Even the bupa dentist where I live offers free dentistry to children of patients (who themselves can get all check ups, regular hygienist appt etc and twice yearly xrays for £22 per month!!). There is no excuse and its not the government’s responsibility its the parents!!

You can buy two toothbrushes in Tesco for 25p. And toothpaste for 50p.

Now you see I thought this, was convinced that all drinking water in the U.K. has fluoride added. I mean I remember it being announced in the 1970s that this was the next big thing and that fluoride was now being added to drinking water and that this was going to have a radical affect on the nation's dental health.

Except, I have now googled this and discovered that for all these years I have been completely mistaken and that fluoride is only added in certain areas and it is completely down to the individual water boards, who apparently are arbitrarily allowed to decide if fluoride is added to your local drinking water or not.

My water board, south east water have decided their customers's dental health are not worth investing in, so fuck you south east water.

They should have checked. It is basic parental responsibility.

Is this survey real. Is it like the McDonalds one where 1 in 5 of 5-8 year olds don't have a book at home. I'm sceptical.

Of course it is…. But surely any gov can only do what it can do with the money it has?!

we are a devolved government in Wales…. Have to fight Westminster for every penny.

Unfortunately there have to be public consultations when fluoride is added to water and the antifluoridation lobby is very strong.
Many areas eg Birmingham the water is naturally fluoridated .
However in eg Anglesey the water was fluoridated , then due to lobbyists fluoride was removed with the consequence that a whole generation of people who had little dental work done then had children without the protection of fluoridated water and hence there was a massive rise in decay . pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7848746/

That’s terrible, why do they object?

@RobertsRadio

I would love to see the map of where fluoride isn't added to the water, and where the highest levels of tooth decay are, I bet they are correlated! And then also compare it to where these dental deserts are, I bet the areas with the worst issues have neither dental provision nor fluoride.

'British children' 🤔 sorry that is a little too vague that description. As I am actually astonished at the amount of countries where those people are all lovely and slim, their kids are always having sweets and other sugary things.
It's morals, mind set and education not being British or not. British describes a whole host of people!

We are born and bred here and my DC has great teeth.
I have also worked in dentistry and it was always the parents with kids who are not from the UK whose teeth were the worst.

Me and my DC haven’t seen a dentist in 5 years as they’re all full and we can’t afford to go private.
So I can see how some children are missed.

In my SEND school we have to flag up regular unbrushed teeth as a safeguarding issue which seems petty but it’s basic parenting and if you are getting that wrong then what else is going on.

I see posts about fluoride in the tap water, I’ve not read up about it myself but I thought fluoride in high doses was actually bad for your body and teeth which is why so many people call for it to be removed?

Tooth decay is a mixture of bad diet and inadequate brushing.

By bad diet, I don't mean sugar, I mean that they're not eating foods that provide vitamins and minerals that keep teeth healthy.

You can prevent tooth decay with your diet but too many kids are raised on processed foods, it's sad.

@TheWholeToothNothingButTheTooth - why can’t you help your DS go for full custody? That picture is appalling. I’d be mustering all resources and getting a solicitor involved. I would not be standing by and letting that happen on my watch. Go to the school, the local authority, social services, their GP, everyone you can. Shame the mum on social media if you have to. Do not let that get any worse tho!

If you are interested in the issues about fluoride in water bfsweb.org

Basically children under three use lower fluoride toothpaste because they can't spit out and there is a small chance they will get white patches on their adult teeth , which are not bad for dental health but may look unsightly. Hence always supervise children's brushing and no more than a pea size amount of toothpaste .

In terms of fluoride in water unless you live somewhere like Colorado in America or The Congo where natural fluoride in water is far , far higher than you would have in this country or artificially added to water , you would have to drink bathfuls a day before it had any effect on teeth , bones or kidneys that was harmful.

Link is not working well try this bfsweb.org/home/introduction-to-fluoride-in-water/

I work in a primary school in the south east and the teeth of some of the children are in a shocking state. Caked in plaque with bad breath and clearly not brushed either at all or very infrequently. I don't understand it. It's pure neglect. They all have phones and PlayStations though. It blows my mind.

But , briefly , effect of fluoridating water

59% reduction
in hospital admissions for children’s dental extractions in fluoridated areas (PHE 2018)
6 million people in the UK are served by water fluoridation schemes.
68% reduction
in children’s hospital admissions for dental extractions in the most deprived areas
52% lower
odds of 5 year olds in the most deprived but fluoridated areas, experiencing decay (PHE 2018).