In around 2007, the local authority decided to roll out an entirely new system, which although was intended to provide a better service for children and young people, had failed spectacularly every time it had been rolled out in other areas - a fact that did not deter them in the least. The centralisation of services, and the centralised assessment form which many users found virtually impossible to fill out accurately, meant that many young people were slipping through the system or being offered services which were inappropriate for them.



At about the same time, the local authority spent many thousands of taxpayers’ pounds forcing youth workers through an NVQ level 3 course in youth work, which involved spending many extra hours of their own time identifying, evidencing and documenting the screaming obvious. Hilariously, just before youth workers realised this was actually mandatory, they had been forced to ‘apply’ to do the course, to justify why they should be allowed to do something they were contractually obliged to do (despite the fact that this was not specifically in any employees contract. Contracts at my local authority were spoken of in the reverent terms usually reserved for the Loch Ness Monster and Xanadu. One employee actually thought they saw one once, which caused great excitement. It turned out to have been a non-contact form).



Many youth workers who had no confidence in their academic skills left the service at this point which was desperately sad for them and the young people for whom they’d been providing invaluable support. However, the local authority were not the slightest bit perturbed, which made sense in 2012 when the entire youth service was deleted…...imagine how much more money they would have wasted on those meaningless qualifications if those youth workers had stayed and completed the course! Therefore, despite my love for working with young people, I realised that I was not evidencing or meeting my own personal need; to help them and make their lives easier. I had identified an outcome which I was failing to achieve! The system in which I was working was procedure-based, policy-based, evidence-based and database-based, but not people-based. I was part of a problem, whereas I’d always wanted to be part of the solution.



So I decided to try and fulfil a little daydream I’d had for a while about becoming a dental nurse. It was something that appealed based entirely on the way it would enable me to help people and make their lives easier in certain specific ways, yet appeared to be free of the meaningless beaurocracy involved in youth work. I was taken on as a trainee by a wonderful, family owned practice whose patient list includes grandchildren of patients who first attended as children themselves. From the moment I first walked through the door, I loved it – it felt warm and caring, and I felt I could do good there. I felt I could help people and make their lives easier, the way mine could sometimes be made easier.



However.



In the three short years since I became a dental nurse, dentistry has become the oral health equivalent of the youth service. An expensive leviathan of a quango, ostensibly a “regulator” (despite that fact that all dental professionals were already regulated by an existing regulator; the General Dental Council) known as the CQC, decided that care homes, hospitals and dental practices were hotbeds of hazard. In an attempt to justify its existence, it demands that dental practice staff have in-depth knowledge of legislation relating to vulnerable adults and children and implement policies relating to everything from infection control (which makes sense) to patient restraint (which does not).

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