Dentist for au pair

[museomum]

Does anyone have experience of au pair visiting a dentist in UK? Our Spanish au pair tried two dentists today - one wanted to charge her thousands of pounds privately and the other said she needed "some sort of security number" - presuming National Insurance number? She doesn't have an EHIC at the moment as they expire after a year in Spain. Any advice welcome!

I think the dentists are correct. If she is coming to the UK as an Au Pair she should have taken out private insurance to cover medical and dental care as she is not entitled to NHS treatment. Even her EHIC card will not be accepted as the EHIC is for tourists who encounter a medical emergency. As your Au Pair is not a tourist I don't think she can legally use an EHIC and I doubt the dental treatment she is seeking will be considered to be a medical emergency. It won't cover her for an existing problem but tell her that she needs to take out some form of insurance policy to cover things like this for the rest of her stay. As for now, she can try and get an EHIC and take it to a dental hospital and see if they will accept it or she can pay privately. Ask her if she has certificado digital. If she does an EHIC from Spain can be ordered online and from the website she will be able to print off a temporary certificate of cover which she can use immediately rather than having to wait for the card to arrive. If she does not have certificado digital I think the only way for her to get an EHIC is to go personally to a Spanish Social security office but I might be wrong.

That's incorrect. Unless she's here very short-term, people coming to legally work in the UK (inc au pairs) are classed as ordinarily resident for NHS purposes. For example tier 5 youth visa applicants pay a health care surcharge, but as an EU citizen she doesn't need to do this.

This document explains it and she should print it out and take it to a dental practice and explain that she is ordinarily resident.

www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-entitlements-migrant-health-guide

I linked the information about being "ordinarily resident" on a previous post.