Nursery World - Health & Wellbeing: Initiatives to help children brush better

Supervised toothbrushing could be key to reducing the staggering number of infants with tooth decay. By Annette Rawstrone

Supervised toothbrushing programmes for young children have proved effective in reducing tooth decay, and easy for nurseries and schools to run.

Aquarter of children in England have tooth decay by the time they are five years old, with this statistic rising to 50 per cent in some deprived areas around the country. The treatment of tooth decay is the most common reason why young children are admitted to hospital – 33,000 each year, which costs the NHS more than £50 million annually.

The impact tooth decay has on young children is often equally huge. It negatively affects children in a variety of ways, including:

Children with decay in their first teeth are four times more likely to go on to develop decay in their adult teeth. But tooth decay is largely preventable through good oral health routines. In response, over the past decade, supervised toothbrushing programmes have been introduced in some areas that can be delivered in early years settings, with practitioners overseeing children cleaning their teeth each day (see Case study).

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