School Dentist

[KellieB01]

Hello,

My daughter had the dentist in school yesterday, no one knew anything about it, and they'd never asked consent to look at or treat my daughter.

If they had I would of told them that she wasn't allowed the fluoride varnish and she only had it last month and her own dentist has a care plan in place for her teeth.

But that not asking for consent has annoyed me a little, is this normal practice in schools when the dentist is due round?

We usually get a letter from Childsmile about 2 months before they are due to come to school, you don't have to give consent but you can opt out so if the letter didn't make it home they will have presumed you've consented.

I wonder why NOT providing explicit consent is presumed as consent is given. Is that normal in this country?

They used to ask for consent everytime but I think loads of parents weren't bothering handing the forms back giving consent back or not, this was started in schools deprived areas in my town, so it was easier to send out one detailed form and now every 6 months they send out a letter with all the details on and you only hand it back if there is any changes or for what ever reason you don't want the varnish.

They tend to send a letter home, do a news letter with everything coming up and then tweet. Yet talking to the parents today, none of them knew, some didn't even have the aftercare letter in.

Spoke to her teacher and she said we should of had something home to sign.

My daughter has a medical issue on her file so thought they'd have to check to make sure it won't effect that.

We've never had a dentist visit. I wonder how commonplace it is?