Monday, 19 January 2009

Spinning A Teething Problem Or Wasting Taxpayers Money?

I was struck by a posting on National Death Service relating the spending of £700,000 of taxpayers money on teaching children to clean their teeth, with the scheme, which will take place in pre-schools and nurseries, introducing daily supervised toothbrushing. The report makes mention that new figures showed five-year-olds in the area had an average of 1.3 decayed, missing or filled teeth. On the basis that the process of milk teeth being replaced by permanent teeth usually, on average, takes place between the years of five or six and eleven or twelve is it any wonder that five year olds may well have missing teeth?

Where is the parental care and instruction, ie responsibility, in this child-rearing process? Should not experts in dentistry be aware of the exfoliation process? Or is this a case whereby the root cause of this expenditure is bureaucrats suffering teething problems in filling holes in their workload, thereby taking yet another bite of taxpayers money?

Is this scheme not making a costly mountain out of a mole(r) hill?


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