Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made against the objectives of NHS England’s Starting Well scheme for children's oral health.
NHS England’s ‘Starting Well’ programme will work in 13 high needs areas to improve the oral health of children under the age of five years who would not normally be regular dental attenders. NHS England is also developing a complementary ‘Starting Well Core’ offer, a similar commissioning approach designed to facilitate increased access and early preventive care for young children. This offer will be made available in 2018, with commissioners making local decisions on whether to fund based on their assessment of need locally.
The Starting Well programme launched last autumn with schemes in the 13 areas going live during this spring. It is therefore too early to assess delivery against scheme objectives. A national evaluation of Starting Well is being led by the University of Birmingham on behalf of NHS England, with the aim to evaluate if the aims and objectives of the programme were met and to inform the development of guidance to future commissioners of such programmes. NHS England advise that an interim evaluation report covering the first year of the programme is expected in spring 2019.