HAC6121 Children’s Oral Health Specialist Service

This service will provide system-wide specialist leadership and service provision on oral health across the local children’s partnership, with a particular focus on early years. It will bring together current investment into a single service, integrating four evidence-based components to ensure the most cost-effective interventions are delivered at scale: 1.

Strategic oversight and training offer: to ensure all professionals across the borough are sharing the same key oral health messages and are confident to support families. This will include working with faith and community organisations to promote oral health and develop culturally appropriate resources to respond to existing oral health inequities. 2.

Oral health checks and fluoride varnish application: Like the existing ‘Healthy Teeth in Schools’ service, this will deliver 6-monthly oral health checks of children’s teeth and apply protective fluoride varnish to all children in schools aged 3-6 years (nursery, Reception and Year 1). 3. Universal supervised toothbrushing programme: This programme trains early years settings such as nurseries to support children to brush their teeth on a daily basis.

It includes training, provision of materials, quality assurance and infection control. This is a highly cost-effective programme that has demonstrated impact on home toothbrushing practices, as well as ensuring children from all backgrounds are supported to establish good oral health practices.

The government has funded a targeted programme in the borough in 25/26. This programme will extend to all nurseries, as local analyses shows that a targeted programme will miss children in higher-risk groups. 4.

Provision of Brush for Life Packs at health visiting contacts. Provision of toothbrush/toothpaste packs to every child at the four health visiting contacts between 4 months and 2 years of age.

This will provide material support for families experiencing poverty and work to safeguard against dental neglect. Scope: This lot covers the delivery of universal, and specialist oral health training aimed at children’s professionals and public health practitioners.

The provider will be responsible for designing, delivering, and quality assuring training that supports consistent, evidence based oral health messaging across early years, school-age, and public health settings. Key Deliverables: • Generic oral health training for 0–5 children’s professionals (e.g., early years staff). • Generic oral health training for 5–19 children’s professionals (e.g., school staff, youth workers). • Specialist oral health training for public health professionals, including health visitors and school nurses. • Training and supervision for settings delivering supervised toothbrushing, ensuring fidelity to programme standards.

This lot focuses on workforce capacity-building and consistent oral health promotion across the children’s sector. Scope: This lot covers the operational coordination required to support the implementation of oral health interventions within schools.

Key Deliverables: • Scheduling, coordinating, and liaising with schools to support the delivery of oral health interventions. • Managing logistics, communication with education settings, and supporting smooth programme delivery. The emphasis is on effective operational management and strong relationships with schools to enable successful delivery of interventions undertaken through other lots.

PLEASE NOTE THE VALUES FOR THIS LOT IS NOT £1/£1.20 IT IS A COMBINATION OF LOTS 1 AND 2. EITHER LOT 1 AND LOT 2 WILL BE AWARDED WITH THEIR VALUES OR LOT 3 WILL BE AWARDED FOR THE TOTAL CONTRACT VALUE.

Scope: This lot encompasses the combined delivery of both leadership/training and direct oral health interventions, providing a fully integrated service model. It is suitable for providers able to deliver an end to end service.

Key Deliverables: • All deliverables from Lot 1 (leadership and training). • Delivery of oral health interventions, including: • Fluoride varnish application and oral health checks in schools. • Universal supervised toothbrushing programme, including procurement and distribution of materials for early years settings. • Brush for Life pack procurement and distribution to health visitors. Lot 3 enables a single-provider model delivering the full suite of oral health improvement activity, ensuring alignment across workforce development and intervention delivery.