Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of mobile dental check-up vehicles on children's oral health.

In England local authorities are responsible for assessing oral health needs, developing oral health strategies and commissioning oral health improvement programmes for children and adults in their local area.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) has published an evidence-based toolkit, ‘Delivering better oral health - an evidence-based toolkit for prevention’, for dental teams to support preventive advice and treatment for their patients, including the prevention of tooth decay in children. This toolkit is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-better-oral-health-an-evidence-based-toolkit-for-prevention

OHID has also published ‘Improving oral health: an evidence-informed toolkit for local authorities’, which has, as one of its recommendations, oral health training for the wider professional workforce. This is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/improving-oral-health-an-evidence-informed-toolkit-for-local-authorities