Gaby Bissett discusses the realities of dental care in the UK right now and how one dental charity is making a major difference.
I arrived in Hastings, Sussex, after a three-hour drive (including a 35 minute delay on the M25), in the pouring rain and with no umbrella. I would be lying if I said I was in high spirits but as I was greeted by the Dentaid team at its mobile clinic, I was reminded why the journey down was going to be completely worth it.
Dentaid is a charity that provides free dental care for homeless and vulnerable people across the UK. Unsurprisingly, it has seen the demand for its services rocket over the last few years, with the Hastings clinic being one of hundreds in this year alone.
Headed up by its CEO Andy Evans, he says this year has been significantly different.
‘It’s been very busy. We’ll be doing around 275 clinics in 2022 – last year we had 174,’ he tells me.
‘It’s been challenging because the need is so great. We are getting 30 calls a month from centres supporting people experiencing homelessness and other underserved groups wanting us to provide their service users with essential dental care.
‘The biggest headache is how do we meet the need with the limited amount of units that we currently have. It’s a battle.’
Community ethos
Mobile clinics take place wherever there’s a need and the funding. Dentaid often partners with local projects and charities, who advertise its services to the vulnerable groups in the area.
At this particular clinic, Dentaid partnered with the Seaview Project, an open-access wellbeing centre that provides food and drink, shelter, warmth, clothes, companionship and a range of activities to vulnerable locals.
Jill Harding, Dentaid’s communication director, shows me around and talks me through the process – they are given a list of patients by the centre, who then chat to a Dentaid representative about their health and current medication before heading into the dental chair.
Jill’s day to day is office-based, handling the marketing and communications for the entire charity. But she tells me that Dentaid make sure all members of the team regularly get involved with delivering mobile clinics; today, she is recording the patients’ medical histories.
After the first patient is seen, I catch him afterwards to see how he’s feeling. He tells me this is his second time at the clinic.
‘They sorted out the other one and now this one,’ he says.
‘I am happy of course. It was after a bicycle accident where I had been drinking and woke up in hospital.
‘Now I need a bit of a clean up – I’ll be back in a couple of weeks!’
Giving back smiles
On the day, we were also joined by a team from Dentsply Sirona to hand over a cheque of more than £5,000 following its Miles for Smiles event earlier this year.
‘We wanted to do something for charity,’ said Louise Locke, sales training lead.
‘Within the organisation, we have six different employee resource groups. We all joined up together to arrange the event and we decided that we wanted to walk and we wanted to “give smiles back”.
‘Our first thought was that we wanted to raise money for the homeless and immediately thought of Dentaid. It all just fitted together after that.
‘The theme focused on the fact that there’s 227,000 people in crisis in the UK. We wanted to raise money for Dentaid to be able to treat these people and give them their smiles back.
‘We walked 22.7km – some of us longer! – across two locations – London and Manchester. It was £27 to register, open to everyone, with some sponsors such as Dental Sky and Trycare.’
Francois Loiseau, vice president and general manager of Dentaid, said: ‘We hope to run this again in the future as there’s a real need for the local communities.
‘We do have a corporate responsibility – we can’t be a UK leader in dental care and not play an active part in giving back. We hope to see more people next year.’
‘Fit my skillset’
But of course, Dentaid cannot continue without its volunteers. The dentist on the day is Felicity Cross, who works in Rye. She got involved with Dentaid after the first Covid-19 lockdown and now volunteers once a month.
She said: ‘I really enjoy coming down and doing sessions here. It’s a very different kind of dentistry to what I do normally in practice.
‘It’s really just working with the basics as there’s so much that needs doing. A lot of it involves getting people out of pain.
‘The reason I got involved is due to working at an almost emergency clinic after lockdown. We had to see a lot of people who were ringing 111, with a focus on getting people out of pain using extractions.
‘I saw an advert for this afterwards and thought it was something that was very niche, but that fit my skillset perfectly after months of doing all of those extractions.’
Loved what it stood for
But for the dental nurse on the day, Chanel Mackenzie, it’s her first ever clinic. She travelled down from Peckham, south London, to volunteer.
‘I’ve been a dental nurse for about 15 years and I’ve been wanting to do some kind of charity work for a long time,’ she says.
‘During the pandemic, we saw a lot of patients who were in need. I stumbled across Dentaid during that time and loved everything that it stood for.
‘Now, I work three days a week so it frees up some time to give back.’
I asked Andy what kind of volunteers the charity are most in need of right now. ‘Dental nurses and dentists – we don’t have enough and would love to have more.
‘This is particularly true for nurses, who may struggle to get the time off. The bigger pool of volunteers that we have, the more people we can go out to see.’
For more information visit www.dentaid.org.
Dentaid has recently kicked off an urgent appeal to repair two of its mobile units. Find out more here.
Anyone who wants to volunteer for us in the UK can email [email protected]or call 01794 324249
