Public Health England and stakeholders have produced the toolkit to support care homes and commissioners to implement the NICE guideline (NG48): Oral health for adults in care homes.
The toolkit contains materials to support health champions within care homes to train care home staff. These include training slides, a manual with more information, recorded webinars and a catalogue of quality-assured online videos to support training.
For care home managers, there are oral health policy templates, a quality assurance checklist and a baseline assessment to help care home managers put NICE guidance into practice. The toolkit also includes links to all the key oral health publications relating to care homes.
There are useful links for care home staff, residents, their families and friends to support good oral health and reduce oral health inequalities.
Care teams, especially health champions, can benefit from interactive training from a mouth care clinical trainer. This may be a dental care professional or speech and language therapist with appropriate experience.
Free oral health education training
The new Oral Health Improvement Team support the oral health of children and cared for adults in Devon. Could you, or colleagues pass on prevention messages and benefit from free training? Please contact ndht.ohesds@nhs.net or telephone 01392 405705.
Exeter, Mid, East and North Devon
Devon Salaried Dental Service: Email: ndht.ohesds@nhs.net. Telephone: 01392 405717
Torbay and South Devon
For nursing and residential care homes for older people: Health Education England. Email: Ingrid.Bowden@hee.nhs.uk
For care homes for people with learning disabilities or special needs: Torbay and South Devon Special Care Dental Service. Email: sdc-dental.t-sd@nhs.net Telephone: 01803 217777
Plymouth
Health Education England. Email: Ingrid.Bowden@hee.nhs.uk.
COVID-19 has significantly affected the way dental teams can provide patient care. Systems are in place to provide urgent dental care. Dental teams may not be able to provide all of their routine dental services in their usual timescales at present.
The following providers are contracted to provide domiciliary dental care in Devon by NHS England. These providers would be your first contact point if seeking care for a person who cannot travel to a dental practice.
The following community dental services also provide some domiciliary dental care for people with very complex needs who meet the relevant eligibility criteria. They take referrals from dentists and from other health and social care professionals in their catchment area.
The dental helpline gives advice to people in Devon and Cornwall on where to find an NHS dentist, how to access dental care in an emergency and out of hours. Tel: 03330 063 300 Email: accessdentalhelpline@nhs.net
People who have a dental practice and use it regularly should contact their dentist by phone to seek a referral. All NHS dental surgeries should be accessible by telephone.
For patients who do not have access to a regular dentist for routine care and require urgent treatment, this can be accessed as follows:
Public Health England and stakeholders have produced the toolkit to support care homes and commissioners to implement the NICE guideline (NG48): Oral health for adults in care homes. The toolkit also contains useful links for care home staff, residents, their families and friends to support good oral health and reduce oral health inequalities.