The Care Forum is currently working on a project with NHS England (NHSE) and NHS Improvement (NHSI) over the next six weeks to find out from people if they or someone they know uses Special Care Dental Services.
They want to gather the view views of patients, potential patients, parents, carers and advocates to help shape future developments of Special Care Dental Services in the South West. Special Care Dental Services focus on improving the oral health of people who have a health condition or have circumstances which prevents them from using a high street dentist. Examples of those using the services include:
- People suffering from anxiety and/or extreme phobia of dental treatment
- People with learning difficulties and/or autism
- People with physical disabilities
- People experiencing dementia
- Patients who need bariatric equipment
- People undergoing treatment for cancer
- Some homeless people
It is these people that the NHS would like feedback from about their awareness and experience of using these services. If you think that any of your members, service users or network may be using this service or are eligible to do so I’d be very grateful if you could help share the survey with them and/ or their support workers and carers.
More information about eligibility can be found here – I’d encourage you to read this as eligibility is very specific. Feedback can be given via an online survey which you can find by following this link. Paper copies are also available as well as copies in Easy Read which can be found here.
Please note that the survey focuses only those people who have used the service. We would also be interested to hear from people who are eligible but do not use the service and why this may be. The engagement work will run until 4 October 2019. On completion of the engagement, NHSE and NHSI will analyse the feedback, publish the findings and explain the next steps.