Purpose

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

Decision

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.

Reasons for the decision

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.

Alternative options considered

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.