Dear Dental Colleagues
The Orthodontic Managed Clinical Network (MCN) have identified that a minority of children who have been referred for orthodontic treatment have no access to GDP service support.
Through the MCN’s work in supporting Orthodontic treatment across South West, this is a key issue that is creating health inequality, and we are keen to support in alleviating this pathway issue. As you will appreciate some of these children will have been waiting for years and at the point of treatment commencement, it is proving difficult to progress without a named active GDP.
We are writing to you to appeal for voluntary commitments to take on children in such a position for the period they are receiving orthodontic treatment in either primary or secondary care. Clinically these children may require support in maintaining dental health through oral hygiene and in some cases treatment. They may also require removal of adult teeth, and a small number will require restorative prosthesis at the end of their orthodontic treatment.
We would value your participation in supporting this small cohort of patients in this category. The orthodontic MCN have run a survey with orthodontic providers to understand the scale of the problem, but the returns have not been comprehensive to make a determination for all our seven systems across SW region. However, in one of our South West ICBs, we have tracked less than 20 affected children over a year’s period.
To provide some resilience and access, we are requesting practices to declare how many children in this category you will be prepared to support for the period October 2025 to October 2026. We appreciate that there is quite a lot impacting on GDPs and for that reason we would welcome practices committing to supporting even small numbers.
We are initiating this request to try and support patients who are in desperate need and to offer them some choice in what practice they could access to minimise incidences of non-attendance. As we are not convinced that there are significant numbers of children in this category, it is likely that even with GDP practices coming forward, the capacity declared may not be used if there is no need in your geographical area. Nonetheless we would welcome as many voluntary commitments as possible. It will also be our expectation that any patients taken on by the GDP practice through this route, agrees to complying with the receiving practice’s rules and expected patient commitment(s).
Please can you express your interest to support via the Microsoft form on this link GDP Access for Orthodontic Patients or https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=slTDN7CF9UeyIge0jXdO4yf4Lg6_3LtIlrwuRXKp0dtUOVdKWjQ1OUhKMkRHTk1UWENGMlIzQk1DTS4u by mid-night Sunday 26th October 2025.
Thank you for your consideration and support.
Amelia Jerreat
Orthodontic MCN Chair
Terry Chikurunhe
South West CCH – Dental