In the local community, Childsmile teams work closely with various partners to support children and families to adopt positive oral health behaviours. Referrals can be received from many sources including the parent, health visitor, dental service, education, social work and community / voluntary groups or organisations.
Our aim is to build confidence in Childsmile and to increase the number of children who eat a healthy diet and brush their teeth twice a day. This will reduce the number of children with tooth decay and in need of clinical intervention.
The community programme involves dental health support workers, in partnership with health visitors and partners, identifying vulnerable families and targeting support through tailored interventions. This includes sign-posting, based on individual needs and circumstances.
Families will be supported with the process of toothbrushing as well as additional techniques around encouraging routine, acceptance of the toothbrush, adaption to the toothbrush to support grip etc. However, some of the visits by a Dental Health Support Worker might not even mention a dentist or toothbrushing.
Childsmile understands that for some families toothbrushing can be a lower priority due to challenges in the family home. The role of the Dental Health Support Worker is to support these families to help them to access services which can offer help with challenges other than oral health (e.g. food poverty and housing). This gives families the space to think about how they can adopt positive oral health routines.
Community mapping allows Dental Health Support Workers to become familiar with different organisations, colleagues and services. It is important for everyone in the dental team to have an awareness of all the partners in the local area and what they offer, so that when you are directing a family to these services, you are confident that they will receive the assistance required.
We are here to support families to do all the right things in their daily toothbrushing routine which will mean that when a dentist appointment is available, the focus will be on checking that the adult teeth are emerging correctly, and not about a clinical intervention.
Examples of services that we work with include:
- Health Visiting / Family Nurse Partnership
- Primary care dental service (for registration/attendance etc)
- Other NHS services including smoking cessation, mental health, SLT, Pharmacy
- Social worker/ Child protection
- Food security/availability (food banks/pantries etc)
- Income/financial (citizens advice/ Welfare benefit support)
- Parent/baby groups (e.g. Toddler groups etc)
- Parenting skills (triple P etc)
- Nutrition/diet (e.g. weaning fayres)
- Community family support (e.g. Homestart)
- ASN support
- Dedicated ethnic minority service
- And many others
The DHSW and family work together to develop an action plan tailored to the family’s needs and includes agreed follow up.
HIC
Every child intervention is logged within the HIC system including any failed appointment. This helps a DHSW see what actions have been agreed with a family and what should happen next. It can also support Childsmile to understand the outcomes and activity being carried out within the Practice programme.
This page is currently under review if you have any feedback please email nss.childsmile@nhs.scot