Poor oral health impacts on school readiness and leads to missed days of school due to pain and infection; it affects children’s ability to eat, smile and socialise, negatively impacting confidence and wellbeing, and it also increases demand on emergency dental care, with the most common reason children aged 5 to 9 being admitted to hospital is to have treatment for decayed teeth.
Early Years settings provide a critical opportunity to promote oral health through education, healthy food environments and access to fluoride toothbrushing programmes. By incorporating supervised toothbrushing in these settings evidence shows a positive effect on tooth decay, alongside teaching children to brush their teeth from an early age and encouraging good oral health hygiene at home.
Through our Brilliant Brushers scheme we are supporting a range of Early Years settings to undertake daily dry supervised toothbrushing by providing resources and advice.
You can find out more about the Brilliant Brushers scheme here.
- Visit our 'Oral Health Toolkit' for professionals and stakeholders here.
- The document 'How to prevent tooth decay' is available under Downloads.
- Download our pre-school children’s oral health story-book ‘The Tooth Family’ available under Downloads.
To sign up to be part of Brilliant Brushers email us at PublicHealth@wolverhampton.gov.uk