Children in Cumbria are going abroad for dentist appointments, says MP
A number of children in Cumbrian schools are travelling abroad for dentistry care due to the "difficulty" in getting an NHS appointment, an MP told Parliament.
Tim Farron, the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, said an attendance officer at a local primary school had written to him after she found that families in her school were going abroad for dental appointments.
According to Mr Farron, the attendance officer said: “We have a high number of children who are regularly missing out on education due to being unable to register with a local NHS dentist.
“A large number of our children have Polish, Romanian, Latvian and Ukrainian parents and therefore will find it easier to travel back to their parents’ original home country rather than wait for a local NHS dentist who is accepting patients.”
Figures read out by the MP in Parliament said in Cumbria the proportion of children seen by a dentist in the NHS each year went from 64% in 2018 to just 50% last year - a drop of 14% in five years.
The number of adults seen by a dentist in the past two years is also down by 14%, to only 36.5%.
Mr Farron said: “This is more than just a health issue; it is a moral issue, a fairness issue and a justice issue.
"A quick search of the NHS website shows that the nearest dental practice to Kendal that is taking on NHS patients is in Accrington, an 80-mile round trip, and that the nearest NHS practice to Kirkby Stephen is in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham, a round trip of two hours.”
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Leanne Fawcett, the dental delivery assurance manager at NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board, previously told the health and adults scrutiny meeting of Westmorland and Furness council access to dentistry has always been an issue but it had been "exaggerated" post pandemic.
In March 2020, dentist practices closed their doors for four months, only accepting patients who were in extreme pain. They have only been fully reopen since July 2022.
A report published by NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board states there is a backlog of routine care which is expected to take until July 2026 to clear.
Ms Fawcett told the committee that behaviours people developed during lockdown have had an "adverse effect" on people’s oral health "exaggerated by the fact we couldn’t go to see the dentist."
According to the report this means people are now requiring more appointments to meet their clinical needs with dental providers reporting that their appointment books are full but with less people being able to access routine care.
The report states the decline in oral health since the pandemic means the level of funding received is currently only sufficient for around 50% of the population to be able to access routine NHS dental care.
The Parliamentary under-secretary of state for health and social care Dame Andrea Leadsom said: “We are investing £3 billion a year in dentistry, and we need to ensure that every penny is spent properly and delivers the best results.
“However, the honest truth is that to recover from covid, during which hardly anyone saw a dentist, whether private or NHS, money will not be the silver bullet—a quick funding fix cannot solve all of the backlog and deliver on our ambition that everyone who needs an NHS dentist should be able to access one.
"As such, we are working on both short-term recovery and long-term system reform, supported by the profession.”
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