On November 4, 2022, the Dental Wellness Trust will host its 7th Annual Saving Kids Teeth Conference. The event, which takes place at the Wellcome Collection, London, combines theory with practical hands-on sessions designed to give delegates an understanding of the latest preventive approaches and minimally invasive procedures for children’s oral health. There will also be informative lectures on a wide variety of topics, one of which is safeguarding, presented by Allison Ward. The Dentist caught up with Allison ahead of the event.
How did you become involved with the conference?
AW: I'm not a dentist, I am a community paediatrician, which means I don't work primarily in a hospital, I work at health centres in the community. One of the roles I have is leading a refugee health service and through that work, I came across the work of the Dental Wellness Trust. And we collaborated in providing some outreach dental services to asylum seekers placed across London, and so that's how I came to understand the work of the Dental Wellness Trust. Through that Linda Greenwall (Dental Wellness Trust’s founder) noted that I was a safeguarding paediatrician, and because clinical safeguarding is as important to dentists as it is to doctors, she asked me to come along and discuss safeguarding in dentistry.
What is the main focus of your talk?
AW: So, to start off with, it's an overview about why an understanding of safeguarding is important, and a recap on why we worry about adverse childhood experiences and why exposure to them is a significant public health problem and how they impart mortality rates. And then it moves more into thinking about what safeguarding means to a refugee population, and then there is a section about what we have seen so far about dental needs in the refugee population.
So, starting off with the basics then, how exactly would you define safeguarding, and do you think its meaning is understood in the dental profession?
AW: I think that within both the medical and dental profession there is a tendency for most people to think that safeguarding is child protection and a misunderstanding of what child protection is in relation to safeguarding. Child protection is very much the tip of the iceberg, it is the reaction to something bad happening, whereas when you think about safeguarding you are actually talking about a proactive approach to preventing something bad from happening, and optimising a child and young person’s outcomes. And whilst we are very good in medicine and dentistry in being taught about black eyes or belt marks, child protection things, we are perhaps not so good in thinking about our role in proactive safeguarding. For example, thinking about what else is missing in a child’s life, and what can I do and what can I advocate for. What message can I communicate loudly so they get what they need? In the refugee population, safeguarding can be very simple things like making sure a child has access to universal children’s services. Making sure they have access to all they need. So, actually safeguarding starts with some of the basic things that most of us take for granted.
When thinking of safeguarding proactively rather than reactively, does that potentially change the relationship between the healthcare provider and parent making it feel more collaborative than it might otherwise be?
AW: Yes, absolutely it is about working together. It is about recognising that things might be tough and thinking, 'what do you need and how can we help to make things better?’ Safeguarding cannot just be about waiting until things get so bad that there is a black eye or something like that. So it really is about starting at the right point and going back to basics with what people need. Then there is a thing called Early Help, which is the next step up from Universal Services, and it’s about those families that do need a little bit of extra help, for example making sure they can access a key worker, or have help with child care, and all those kinds of things.
How should a dental professional conduct such a conversation without offending a patient?
AW: I think it very much depends on how you communicate things, and I suppose the more vulnerable and in-need families you work with the more confident you will be around conversations about poverty and un-met need. But particularly within the refugee population, almost exclusively people are keen to be given access to services. And if you approach it collaboratively rather than combatively, then it is unusual for it to be a difficult conversation and people are thankful for the guidance and help.
If a dentist is concerned about a particular issue, what is the correct response and do clinicians have a responsibility to follow up after making a referral of whatever sort?
AW: I do think there is a responsibility to follow up, but I think the first thing they might want to do is get some advice as to whether it is actually a safeguarding issue or not, I understand that every practice should have a lead on safeguarding and everyone should have appropriate training in that area and know where and when to place a call. The thing about going through a local authority is that that then accesses a muti-agency team so even though it is a social worker that takes the call they are then linked into somebody from health, somebody from education and so on and so on.
With regards to following up, yes, it is the responsibility of the one making the call to:
- Make sure the referral was received
- Make sure it has been actioned
Now sometimes you might not get a lot of information back, but you do need to know that the case has been closed or has been allocated to somebody.
How important is it that the entire team is aware of the practice’s safeguarding policies and responsibilities?
AW: Well I can talk about what we do in medical health, and I think that is a good example for dentistry. My expectation is that any member of the team who is coming into contact with children and families should have a good level of understanding of the red flags to look out for, and whom to contact if they have concerns. And that includes the nursing team and even reception staff because the receptionist may be the only person who sees the parent interact with the child, or perhaps when phoning about an appointment they may hear shouting or abuse of that sort. So it really is important for everyone in the team.
For more information visit www.dentalwellnesstrust.org/conference