1. Will the Minister make a statement on the future of community dental services? OQ58536

In August 2022, the chief dental officer published updated guidance on the role of the community dental service. This included the expansion of salaried dental officer posts, to support local communities who have limited or no access to general dental services normally provided by the independent contractor model.

Thank you. I had an excellent time visiting a clinic providing community dental services in Llanelli in September. I'd like to thank everyone who has been working in communities across Wales, particularly during the red period of the pandemic, to ensure that emergency services were available.

In visiting the community dental services in Llanelli, I learned a lot about what they do in meeting the needs of vulnerable people: people who have disabilities, mental health difficulties, and also refugees. But there was a concern around the erosion of community dental services. They were really impacted by the pressure on the general dentistry service, and some of their emergency slots were being filled, actually, from those general dentistry emergencies. This often means that there's no availability for vulnerable patients in need of emergency care. So, I wonder if you would commit to ring-fencing the funding and protecting this provision. I wonder if you would join me on a visit, perhaps to Llanelli in our region, to hear from the wonderful staff in providing the service that they do. Diolch yn fawr iawn. 

Thanks very much, and it's very heartening to hear about the work that they are undertaking in those community dental services in Llanelli. The good news is that we have given an additional £2 million worth of recurrent funding since 2022 to improve access, and many of the health boards have used that funding to invest in their community dental services—and that's true, I know, both in Powys and Carmarthenshire, which are in our region. So, they are already using some of that money specifically for what you hoped that they would do.

I guess the other point is that the new dental contract means that we are expecting 112,000 new patient appointments to be possible, and that should free up those slots that you were suggesting are being taken up by people who should really be going elsewhere. So, because of that contractual change, we'll expect more of those community slots to be freed up.

Thank you, Jane Dodds, for raising this question. Yesterday, the First Minister told the Chamber that tens of thousands of new appointments will be made, and that was very welcome. We look forward to where and when these will be made available—when we will start seeing them. I am continuing to receive correspondence from anxious constituents, as we all are here, who are struggling to access NHS dentistry services. Currently just 17 per cent of practices in Monmouthshire are taking on new patients, according to the British Dental Association. Accessing an NHS dentist in Wales as a new patient is currently near impossible, or requires a wait of a couple of years, but if a patient joins a scheme like Denplan, you can almost be seen immediately. Clearly there is something wrong here to allow that to happen. Minister, can you outline today what concrete steps the Welsh Government is taking to help retention and to encourage people to enter the dentist industry? How can you make sure NHS patients aren't disadvantaged by the desire of some dentists to take on more private patients?

Thanks very much. We are already seeing a difference as a result of that new contract. So, 73,000 new patients have already gained access this year, and as I say, we expect that to reach 112,000 new patients during that financial year. So already it is making a difference. We also have the new dental academy in Bangor, which we hope is going to provide access to between 12,000 and 15,000 patients, and that's going to be open for six days a week.

The point is, although there's a lot of noise in the system about NHS dentists leaving, the reality is that only 14 per cent of the contracts have been handed back. Eighty-nine per cent of the total dental contract value has moved on to the new contract. But you don't lose those from the NHS—you redistribute them. So it's not lost just because they go somewhere else. They're just redistributed. 

We have been recruiting more dentists, and I'm certainly putting a lot of pressure on Health Education and Improvement Wales to make sure that we drive up the number of dental therapists in future, because I do think we have to get to a new model where we're talking about a team approach rather than everything being reliant on the dentist. 

Minister, it's clear that there is a problem in this area. Last Friday I had two e-mails from constituents saying that they were concerned that they couldn't access service for their children. One had been encouraged to go private by the dentist, and the other had been told by their dentist that they would have to wait for their two-year-old child at least two years before they would have an appointment. The dental health of children in Wales is a concern. The evidence shows that we are already behind England in that regard. At the beginning of July last year, you said that dental services would go back to normal once emergency treatments had been dealt with first. When will that happen, Minister?

We are getting to a point now where—. Obviously, we're still in a situation where COVID is a reality. One in 50 people have COVID, so we do have to bear in mind that anywhere where there's an aerosol-generating situation, there's an increased risk of the spread of COVID. So, there is bound to be a slight reduction in the level of activity. 

When it comes to children, we're hoping to look at new models of how we can look at that, and there's a lot of work that I've asked my team to look at where we can perhaps consider innovative ways of addressing the issue of child dentistry. Because I am aware that we need to ensure that people get into the right frame of mind, when it comes to teeth health, at a very early age. So, that work is ongoing, and I hope I'll be able to report to you at some point soon on where we're at with that.