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158
In his Annual Report for 1932, the Chief Medical Officer of the Board
of Education (Sir George Newman) states that:—
"The School Dental Service is an integral part of the School
Medical Service, and both of them are educational in purpose.
They are not designed to treat disease indiscriminately, but to fit
the child to receive the education which the State provides, and to
safeguard and build up his health. The aim of the school dental
service should be to secure that as many children as possible should
leave school with a complete and sound set of permanent teeth, free
from disease, and that they should be trained in the care of their
teeth, and taught such principles of dental health as will conduce
to that end."
Provided that the dental staff is sufficient to cope with the needs of the
area—and to arrange for the inspection and treatment of all children roughly
once a year—there may be something to be said in favour of "casual"
treatment. But when, as in Leyton, the dental surgeons cannot cope
with the needs of children requiring conservative treatment (i.e., fillings)",
it is obvious that all treatment of "casuals" must be at the expense of—
and to the detriment of—children requiring and prepared to have conservative
treatment.
Of 6,211 children actually treated under the Leyton Education
Authority's dental scheme during 1933, some 2,167 were "casuals" who
attended for urgent treatment. This means that roughly one child was
treated as a "casual" for every two children treated by appointment;
and that the school dental clinic is not fulfilling its declared function.
In this connection the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education
states :—
"The broad fact is that the purpose of school dentistry is not
to provide a scheme of extraction for ' a never ending stream of
casuals, so large that the dental officers would be employed wholetime
alleviating the sufferings of youth and profiting them nothing
in the greater and more far-reaching problem of good health resulting
from a sound dentition.' It is an educational scheme of conservative
dentistry, and that alone is its justification. The school clinic
is not an out-patient dental department, and any casual work should
be deferred or declined in accordance with the purpose of the general
scheme, already enough and more than enough for most Local
Education Authorities."
The extent to which parents are prepared to accept offers of conservative
dental treatment on behalf of their children depends on their appreciation
of the value and importance of such treatment. If parents know
that their children can have teeth extracted whenever they are the seat of
pain, then they tend to refuse offers of early conservative treatment '"with
an easy conscience." If, however, they understand that, by consistently
refusing conservative treatment, they render their children ineligible for
urgent casual treatment, parents will undoubtedly begin to appreciate the
real purpose and value of the school dental scheme.