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found possible to engage a part-time dental officer for eight sessions
per week at Leyton Green Health Centre, and on 4th February a
private medical practitioner was engaged to give gas anaesthetics
on two sessions per week in the Health Centres, thus freeing the
dental officers for two extra conservative sessions per week, and
giving the equivalent of one and ten-elevenths dental officers in the
area.
One of the disadvantages of employing part-time private
dental practitioners is that they are only able to devote certain
sessions to the work, and it has been found necessary, therefore,
to enlist the assistance of no less than four practitioners during the
year, thus losing some of the continuity and personal contact
between practitioner and patient which is always so desirable. By
this means one has been able to keep the Dental Centre at Leyton
Green open ten-elevenths of its time and to maintain one and
ten-elevenths dental officers in the area.
Under a comprehensive dental service, as envisaged by the
Education Act of 1944, to give complete annual inspection and
treatment to all children in the area who may require it up to the
increased leaving age of 15 years, and to carry out the recommendations
of the Interdepartmental Committee on Dentistry
as regards all the priority classes (i.e., expectant and nursing
mothers, pre-school children, school children and adolescents) the
Staff for the area should be at least five full-time dental officers and
five full-time dental attendants for the school population of approximately
11,600 children, and the equivalent of two full-time dental
officers and two full-time dental attendants for the work to be
done under the Maternity and Child Welfare Service.
In July, 1946, the Education Authority provided for an
establishment of five full-time dental officers until the school
leaving age was raised, this number then to be increased to six ;
but this programme of expansion has been delayed due to war
damage repairs to the Health Centres, the lack of suitable additional
premises as Health Centres and to the inability to secure the
services of sufficient dental officers of experience to staff the scheme.
On 4th October the dental surgery at Park House was closed
and temporarily removed to the medical inspection room at Connaught
School while the necessary war damage repairs were carried
out, and it was so evacuated until the end of the period under
review in this report. When these repairs are completed and
Park House is re-opened there will be two fully equipped dental
surgeries on those premises with the possibility of accommodating
a third dental officer as a temporary measure.