Your Child’s Oral Health: a webinar

There is already a national focus on toothbrushing demonstrations directed towards children. My goal was to help educate the parents or guardians of nursery/primary school children alongside the children.

Your Child’s Oral Health is a short pre-recorded online audio-visual webinar directed at parents and guardians to provide understanding on:

• Tooth decay as a preventative oral disease

• Highlighting the importance of hidden sugars in the diet

• An emphasis on removing the milk bottle

• Basic oral hygiene advice to easily implement at home.

Providing this tool as an online viewing resource provides extra flexibility for parents and guardians to watch/ read at leisure, and does not require them to visit the school for an in-person session. The option to deliver face-to-face sessions to groups if the school requests it is still available, and this is what I did with my pilot school.

Involving parents and guardians is essential to reinforce positive behaviour change at home.

Your Child’s Oral Health represents a proactive, family-focused approach to oral health education. By empowering parents and guardians with knowledge and practical tools to improve oral health within the home, this programme complements existing child-focused efforts and supports a community movement towards better oral health.

Through continued collaboration with local primary schools, the initial feedback was incredibly well-received and encouraging. With my pilot school, the presentation was uploaded to the school’s app portal, but the nursery manager requested a face-to-face session at the new parents’ coffee morning for incoming nursery children. The morning involved presenting to parents and guardians in an informal setting over coffee, with children playing nearby at activity stations. The next session was delivering oral hygiene demonstrations to existing nursery and reception children. The parents/guardians found the information on hidden sugars in cereals and drinks to be most useful. The topic of access to dental care was also raised and discussed, with some finding it difficult to access local NHS dental care within the borough of Tower Hamlets and finding private fees too expensive to pay.

The next phase of this project is to implement it within other local schools in Tower Hamlets. It has also been encouraging to see earlier this year that the supervised toothbrushing programme will be rolled out in early years settings and primary schools, to develop positive brushing habits and continue the emphasis on oral health promotion and awareness.

Editor’s note: Your Child’s Oral Health was created by Sakina Syed, the author of this article; a copy can be accessed by emailing Sakina via [email protected].