Where can I get dental appointments for kids?
I’m fuming. My dental practice is going private. That means my children and I have been turfed out into the great dental wilderness because we can’t afford the extortionate monthly cost of dental appointments for kids.
My eldest was registered with this dentist when she was a few months old and my youngest when she was a couple of weeks – before she had even learned to suck her thumb. At the time, I had heard on the news that an NHS dentist accepting new patients was a unicorn in today’s healthcare so I even sent their applications with some brown-nosing spiel like I was applying for a job or joining a country club. But it turns out my pride in getting them set up was short lived: with no dental practice in the whole county accepting new patients we are now dentally homeless.
Of course we’re far from alone. Half of all children in England don’t have access to an NHS dentist and 6.5 million haven’t seen one in at least a year. This, in a country where tooth extractions are the most common reason for hospital admission in children aged between six and 10 years old – and this is before we account for the rite of passage of losing baby teeth and getting a brace to sort out any crooked adult ones. Of course, kids aren’t the only vulnerable family members: health professionals are clearly aware of the dental problems related to pregnancy and breastfeeding because pregnant women have free NHS dental care for a year – but if they’re not registered with an NHS dentist this becomes pointless.
I’ve rang around every dental practice I could find over the past week, frantically chasing non-existent leads and hearsay of a dentist accepting children. One dental practice said I could join their waiting list but I would have to drive my children the 100 mile round journey to sign my name in person. Another has put me on a waiting list for a waiting list. But I live in a true ‘dental desert’. I half expect to see a toothless camel wandering around.
But then I have to wonder whether I even want to see an NHS dentist. Because they’re so overwhelmed, the number of extractions instead of root treatment has shot up and I’ve barely been looked at in my most recent check ups. Apparently, it all went wrong because of government meddling in 2006. Before then, there were no limitations on how many patients that dentists could treat and they got paid for all the treatment they did. Recently, it’s been proposed that hygienists and therapists will provide more dental care, just as nurses and pharmacists have been brought to the frontline in medical care. That means we’re only one policy away from having to deal with dental receptionists in the same way we do for doctors…
Because I had no other choice, I’ve enrolled us all at a much cheaper private dentist for now, where there’s free dental appointments for kids – with hope that a waiting list might yield results. Toothache can be excruciating and I couldn’t risk putting my children through it but I certainly can’t afford it. We’ll go without a summer trip or a Christmas gift to make up the difference. My advice to you if you are with an NHS dentist now is to start saving because dental care will soon become a luxury for all of us.
