Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress is being made on restarting children’s oral health programmes during the Autumn 2020 school term.

Guidance published by Public Health England (PHE) updating the infection prevention advice for supervised toothbrushing programmes has enabled these programmes to restart when schools reopened in the autumn term. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-supervised-toothbrushing-programmes

PHE does not have a complete picture of how many supervised toothbrushing or other oral health improvement schemes have restarted as these programmes are commissioned locally.