Case studies

Faced with very poor oral health in young children and significant inequalities throughout the district, Bradford Metropolitan District Council has prioritised the oral health of young children, including it in its Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Inequalities Action Plan.

Children in Lancashire and Cumbria have poorer dental health compared to children in other parts of England. The Smile4Life programme was developed in partnership with local authorities to address this problem.

While oral health in Suffolk is generally good, just over 18 per cent of five-year-olds already have dental decay and in some parts of the county nearly a quarter have one or more decayed teeth.

This project focuses on younger children and includes:

Very young children in Manchester were found to have high levels of tooth decay. Prolonged bottle feeding, often with sugared drinks, was of particular concern in this area.

 All children have health needs, and local authorities now have a major role in meeting these.

In this briefing you will find examples of councils that are looking at innovative ways to provide support with a focus on children and families rather than static services, as well as more information about the scale of the problem and what steps can be taken.

This case study forms part of a children's public health transfer resource. On 1 August 2017, the council transferred all of its children’s services to a community interest company owned by the council and two other local authorities.  

In January 2015, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council went out to tender for the school nursing service and didn't receive any bidders. Between January and March, they did an options paper and Cabinet decided in March 2015 to transfer the service in-house and propose that they should subsequently explore also bringing health visiting in-house.

Hull and Wakefield have used PHE’s online SHAPE tool to work out how best to invest money in dental services. SHAPE has allowed officials to map where practices are against areas of high deprivation as a proxy for poor oral health.