PETER Moss (Chairman Bolton Local Dental Committee) wants to know how they can improve services for vulnerable older people who have the misfortune to be in care homes.

I would widen that need in Bolton to include people with mobility problems (wheelchairs users and ambulant disabled), those with learning difficulties, the deaf and the blind.

Some seven years ago Primary Care Trusts released about £15,000 per dental practice ‘to ‘improve physical access for people with disabilities’. I manage a charity group in Bury which carries out access audits for the NHS, for central government and for local authorities and we were tasked with surveying hundreds of dental practices across Lancashire/Merseyside/Yorkshire to make recommendations to improve access. It did not include Bolton.

Many of the recommendations were low cost or simply required a change in management practices. What I found to be astonishing was the attitude of many dental practices towards people with disabilities, ‘if they cannot get in here they can always go to hospital’ sums up the general response (a few were quite good of course).

Simple things like a ramp, an induction loop for deaf patients, an accessible toilet, a portable hoist, handrails on steps etc were argued over. Many of the practices were not only in terraced houses but upstairs in terraced houses. We carried out validation reports on the surveyed practices some three years later and little had been done to improve access.

Why in this day and age do we not have totally accessible dental services located in modern buildings instead of terraced houses? Most GP surgeries are now being delivered from combined health centres in large modern buildings which are accessible, have toilets, accessible corridors, doors and surgeries. Why when the NHS/Councils are building these new medical facilities are dental services invariably not included? Pharmacy is often included.

Portable dental equipment should not be beyond the wit of man to get out and treat in care homes, we have spacecraft circling Mars as we sit here. As Mr Moss says ‘this (vulnerable old people) is a captive and easily accessed and manipulated population’, equally, along with other local disabled people it is also an easily ignored population.

That Bolton is considered to be ‘a beacon of poor dental care’ ought to be source of acute embarrassment and urgent action by Bolton’s HWB, CCG, Health-watch, Patients Council, PALS, etc, if they could just decide who should act. Why has Bolton Health Watch Board not spoken to the Bolton dentists in three years? Speak up anyone on the election trail please!

Ron Shambley

Clough Avenue

Westhoughton