Healthwatch engages with 1600 year 6 pupils and 35 young disabled people at crucial crew

Healthwatch engaged with 1600 11 year old children over a fortnight, along with other organisations providing a series of short workshops. All of the children undertook two surveys for Healthwatch: Looking after your teeth – asking the children what they know about dental and oral health and also a survey about getting help for your healthcare – asking children where their parents or carers would take them in a range of health related scenarios. In addition to this, one day of the fortnight was spent engaging with children from Special Educational Needs Schools surveying Children with disabilities what is important to them when seeing their GP or Social Care professional and who they like to speak on their behalf.

Healthwatch have presented information both at a high level and also broken down by individual schools. The purpose of this is not to reflect on any work undertaken by schools or performance of schools themselves, but to provide other agencies and commissioners of Health & Social Care services information about catchment areas of Herefordshire which may require focused work and suggest the use of schools as a conduit for getting information to parents and carers to raise awareness.

The results show that attendance overall at the dentist is high in comparison to the national averages. Only 2% of Herefordshire children surveyed never attend the dentist, compared to figures from the RCS faculty of Dental Health who quoted that as many as 30% of children in England had not seen an NHS dentist between 2012-2014 . Overall the proportion of children brushing teeth twice a day was high at 91.2% and an 85.6% awareness amongst children that fruit juice was bad for your teeth. Under half of children surveyed tried to avoid eating too many sugary things in order to look after their teeth.