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Dental Care for the Priority Classes
Under Part III of the National Health Service Act 1946, local health authorities are requested to
make special provision for the dental care of expectant and nursing mothers and for children under school
age, so that these priority classes have a guarantee of treatment. Our facilities are sufficient to make
possible the offering of treatment to all who are entitled, and the acceptance represents about 8% of the
total dental services provided by the Borough in 1965.
In the early days of the present National Health Service, these priority classes had the greatest
difficulty in obtaining any dental treatment, but of recent years and especially in Middlesex the very large
number of dental practitioners willing and anxious to receive patients has obviated any such difficulty.
The ideal arrangement would be for every expectant mother already to be attending her dental
practitioner as routine, and in due course at the appropriate age for children also to become regular patients
in their turn. Such, unfortunately, is often not the case, and it is only ante-natal medical advice which
draws attention to the need for dental treatment. Equally, It often happens that the dental needs of
young children are only discovered as a result of their attendance at 'toddler' clinics, the mother either
being totally unaware of the defects or wrongly believing that 'they are only the baby teeth, so they do
not matter'.
Where mother and child welfare clinics are held in the same building as a dental clinic, it is very
convenient for dental inspection to be carried out at the same visit with any necessary treatment
subsequently being provided by appointment. It is hoped that close liaison between the medical and
dental services will permit dental advice and treatment for the priority service patients to be made
available to the greatest advantage of those in need, and that the scope be extended as more of the
appropriate clinics come under the same roof in the new premises planned by the Borough.
Dental disease in the expectant or nursing mother may adversely affect her own general health or
that of her baby, and it is highly desirable that attendance in the dental surgery for inspection becomes
accepted by young children as a routine event before the need for treatment ever arises. Nothing could
be worse for the future acceptance of dental treatment as a normal part of life than when attendance
results from severe pain, with a disastrous association in the young mind of the two experiences the reafter.
The London Borough of Haringey became an autonomous authority on 1st April 1965, whereas the
figures of treatment for the priority service which follow relate to the whole of the year 1965. The total
include those for the first quarter of the year and at that time were attributable to the former County of
Middlesex.