To think if your child needs an NHS orthodontist, and cant go private, the appointments are during term time only from 9.30 to 3pm

[LieLikeALoungeroomLizard]

So either pay thousands or your child will have to miss school in year 10 and 11

We have an 18 month wait and then they totally lost all DD’s details so we have to re do all X-rays etc. Private will be £5,500 but dd said she’d rather we had a family holiday for that.

In the muck of you read the thread you will see lunch times are okay option neither is 9 or 3.30

We got told there would be an almost 2 year wait and that by that time our child would need teeth taken out. So we chose to go private and have Invisalign. The orthodontist will see my child whenever, usually the same day at a time that suits us so they don’t miss school, nothing is too much trouble. It’s not fair but there just isn’t enough funding.
It’s been quite expensive but I think my child has found the Invisalign so much easier than they would have found fixed braces so I’m glad we did it.

@LieLikeALoungeroomLizard

I don't know that she will qualify for it on the NHS yet do I?. I might have to wait a yeat to find that out and realise we've wasted a year

Why don't you go private for the assessment? I was referred to my dentist to the orthodontist, and he does both NHS and private, so no fee for the assessment. You don't have to go ahead with the treatment if you don't qualify for NHS. DD was 1cm too "good" for NHS. Cost us thousands........

Honestly get a credit card and go private and start things off early, you wait toooo long on nhs and by 16 you want teeth sorted

This is all perfectly reasonable. 14 is standard for referral. You need to chill a bit

The majority of children go to an NHS dentist every 6 months, your child is not spscial for this.

Every single parent thinks their child can be seen between 4 and 5 and in the one week half terms. Time just doesn't work like that. The orthodontist probably has their own children so will take annual leave in the holidays.

How do you know they don't see NHS patients in the holidays? Given the majority of work an orthodontist does is NHS Id be surprised, its more likely they are just booked up. Especially in the summer holidays because having 6 weeks where you can't see patients is going to affect your follow ups and create a backlog?

I have usually been able to get after school appointments for my dd. Sometimes they'd be at the start of school or on a pe day or in the holidays

@BigWoollyJumpers 1cm is quite a lot in orthodontic terms! Thats the difference between reasonably good bite and surgery tbh

Not an option not okay

DD’s orthodontist only does Friday mornings 9-12 and that’s it, so at least you have some wriggle room-it earliest morning appointment or one closest to break/lunch? To be fair, after the first appointment of actually putting the blocks on, which was around an hour, all of the others were only 15mins tops for tightening/new elastics so not that much time at all. Just make sure they wear their retainers religiously after-DD still wears hers after 7 years and can still feel that they are tight if she misses a couple of nights.

@LieLikeALoungeroomLizard

How on earth do they decide who qualifies for NHS treatment?

www.fgdp.org.uk/clinical-examination-record-keeping-standards/appendix-12-index-orthodontic-treatment-need

Index of orthodontic treatment need, if they have certain things it puts them into a category

I had braces, my appointments were always during school time. And it was private...we just really didn't think it was a big deal

@Neonprint

I don't know about children's appointments but my dentist only does nh appointments during the day on weekdays. I think it's unfortunately common. If you need flexibility you need to have money for private treatment. It's crap. Luckily I have a really flexible job.

My dentist is the same.

In my DD's case, she was referred as she had a baby tooth still in her gum at 14, the NHS orthodontist says immediately she has to have a brace now before the tooth is removed, so I challenged that. I rang the British Orthodontic society and discussed it, ended up paying £80 for a private second opinion and she didn't need braces at all!! Apparently NHS orthodontists only get paid when the brace is on, all the preliminaries etc, don't count! I got her referred to a dental hospital, I went back to the private orthodontist and he recommended we take no action at all, he said wait, hold your nerve and the adult tooth will come through and lo, 2 years later it did and its perfect.

My poor DD could have had a brace on for over 2 years and had unnecessary surgery if I hadn't pushed it with the private orthodontist. I know this is completely off topic really but I was just blown away by how things unfolded ... don't be quick to accept braces, ask more questions (and all the private orthodontist appointments were at my convenience any time of day I wanted, thanks very much!)

@LieLikeALoungeroomLizard

I don't know that she will qualify for it on the NHS yet do I?. I might have to wait a yeat to find that out and realise we've wasted a year

Your dentist should know whether she is likely to. If she does not meet nhs criteria you would have to pay anyway.

DS's private orthodontist has different price levels depending on how much flexibility you want for appt times. To be able to have every appt out of school hours we would have had to pay an extra £500. Went for the 'cheap(!)' option of between 10 and 4 on either Tues or Weds.

Most of a 9-5 day is school hours and most orthodontic patients are school kids..... so it only stands to reason most appointments are in school hours - chill. Also retained baby teeth are nothing to stress over - all very sortable stuff. I’ve never met anyone who regretted having braces. I meet people who regret not having them every day (I work in a dental practice)

It isn't as bad as you think, as they only need ~ one appointment every half term. Worst case is 3 in each term. If you try hard you can tie it in to the compulsory PE sessions or otherwise rotate through the subjects to miss you'd still only miss one per GCSE in each academic year.

Ours restricted NHS to 9-3 but we were still also allowed to book in half terms and holidays (not allowing that seems a bit harsh).

I think you're making a very big deal of her missng a couple of hours of school for a medical appointment. She can catch up on the work from her teacher/ classmates and it will barely have an impact.

Maybe your orthodontist is very busy but we managed with 2.5 years appointments between year 7 and the end of year 9 and only had to go in late or come home early from school a couple of times at the beginning of new stages of treatment.

Appointments were available between 8.30am and 4.45pm. DS had checkups every 2-3 months and if we booked the next appointment when we went for the one before we usually managed to get an appointment for 3.30pm or a bit later. As DS finished school at 3.10 and was about a 15 minute walk to the orthodontist office from school it all worked out fine about 70% of the time. Sometimes he had to wait a while at the office if his appointment was at 4.45pm or something.

We did have a couple of problems with appointments being in the middle of the day when we had to make them without much notice (ie less than a month) which was sometimes unavoidable when new parts of the treatment started but this didn't happen all the time

I think the key thing for us was that the office was within walking distance of the school and DH or I could meet DS directly at the orthodontist for appointments and also that appointments were offered a bit outside of school hours which really helped. It is pretty shit otherwise I agree

This is normal as far as I know. Both my dc had to attend but went to different orthodontic practices. It doesn't even work out at every 6 weeks as often they couldn't offer a next appointment that soon. I used to try to get late pm with one so she only missed the last lesson and lunch time with the other as I could only take them on Fridays and they closed early that day.

Op lunchtimes are presumably not an option because the orthodontist is eating their lunch. They can't possible keep a record of all the local schools lunch times to make sure they don't give a child an appointment in their lunch break.

I'd take an appt in school hours. Looking at a 4 yr wait to just be seen !

I've worked in an orthodontist for over a decade. Apart from fitting and removing the braces most appointments are 10/15 minutes long. Could you not book them in over games or PE or as PP suggested a subject that they aren't taking forward for GCSE?

Unfortunately once you open up the book to NHS treatment in the evenings and weekends schools will insist that you ensure your child is seen outside of school hours. It just isn't possible for an orthodontic practice to facilitate seeing the bulk of their patients in the evenings and weekends. It isn't just the orthodontist, but dental nurses, receptionists, orthodontic therapists, treatment co-ordinators and practice managers would all have to work evenings and weekends and be off 9am-3pm. No staff would be willing to work those hours, or very few.

Basically all NHS clinics only run at certain times or on certain days, this is no different.

We had nhs treatment and it was always after school, he didn't work in the school holidays.