Decision details

Decision to procure an oral health promotion service to provide:
•evidence-based supervised toothbrushing programme in targeted early years childcare and school settings, including Special Schools.
•Oral health workforce development programme for adult and children’s workforce

Approval has been given for the procurement of an Oral Health Promotion Service from April 2026 for 5 years (3+1+1). The service will maintain support to targeted Early Years Settings participating in Supervised Toothbrushing Programmes and provide a virtual workforce development offer to North Yorkshire Council’s Children and Young People and Health and Adult Services.

The service will aim to improve the oral health of North Yorkshire’s under 5 population through a daily supervised toothbrushing (STB) programme in areas of greatest need. As a minimum this would involve maintaining the existing level of provision to targeted Early Years Settings and Special Schools. This will be delivered alongside a virtual workforce development programme to those in adult and children’s services supporting vulnerable population groups to ensure the workforce has the confidence and skills to deliver evidence based oral health promotion advice and support in their day-to-day roles.

Intended service outcomes:
• The service will support delivery against the public health outcomes framework indicator “Tooth decay in five-year-old children.”
• Reduced inequalities in oral health, with a priority focus on children and young people supported by NYC’s children and family services, children living in deprived areas, children attending NY Special Schools, older people, vulnerable adults and health inclusion groups.
• Embedding evidence based oral health practice within workforces and settings in North Yorkshire.

Health Education England’s eLearning for health platform (eLfh) includes a number of oral health online learning modules which are free to access once an account is created. Whilst the training is not tailored to local needs it does provide evidence-based material which could be accessed by the wider workforce.

There is therefore scope to reduce the workforce development offer but there would need to be a co-ordinated plan to ensure existing evidence-based training is disseminated and overseen by service leads. We would not be able to evaluate attendance or adapt the training to meet local needs or respond to local service requests e.g. this year the provider tailored training specifically for our Living Well and Livewell Smokefree teams which involved discussion with Service leads to ensure this met their needs.