The North West London LDC held its first Annual General Meeting since its restructure last year. As well as presenting our Annual Report the LDC was joined by the College of Dentistry as our special guest speakers.
The AGM started with an excellent presentation from Roshni Karia and Simon Thornton-Wood, CEO of the College. They provided a clear overview of the importance of the College and the work that went into finally establishing a full College for dentistry and that value and clarity that embarking on the journey to Fellowship can bring.
Following the presentation the Board outlined our key activities from the last year, including an explanation of our Vision:
“For NHS dentistry to be valued as an integral part of the local health economy, creating an environment in which dentists are proud to work.”
We explained how we work to achieve this Vision through our local stakeholder engagement. Our work with the Integrated Care Board, Local Councils, Local Healthwatch and others is central to ensuring that local dental services are protected and ultimately grown. This is why our Mission is:
“To embed dental services and oral health into local health and wellbeing plans, ensuring that our role is understood and valued, improving the working lives of dentists to deliver the care their patients need.”
The LDC’s activities over the last year have picked up pace and we are closer to our goal of seeing primary care dentistry properly integrated with other parts of the health and social care system. Some of the highlights of our activity which we discussed include:
- Membership of the ICB Primary Care Programme Board
- Regular meetings with the ICB Director of Primary Care and Senior Responsible Officer for Dentistry
- Met with all local Healthwatch in north west London
- Met with Public Health teams in each Local Authority
- Part of the Westminster Pathfinder Children’s Health Programme
- Member of the Harrow Oral Health Group
- Member of the Brent Oral Health Group
The AGM also welcomed Nikita Vohra as the newest Director to the LDC. Nikita will be representing Brent on the LDC, which is great as it is very active borough. It is also great to have another Director ahead of what looks to be a very busy year as we outlined at the meeting. With two elections, the Mayoral and General, there is a great opportunity for the LDC to engage and raise the profile of dentistry. Some of our key plans for next year include:
- Improve communication to members on our activities
- Build on our relationship and engagement with the ICB to safeguard and grow services in innovative ways
- Ahead of the Local and National elections we will increase our engagement with politicians
We ran a few short polls to find out if those present agreed with our Vision and Mission, work for next year and if we were working in the way expected. It was reassuring to hear that everyone present agreed with the Vision and Mission, and understood the approach to engagement that we are taking. It was also really helpful to hear that people agreed with our plans for the next year and that our work would help protect NHS dental services. However, it was clear that some members felt that we needed to do more. Rest assured, we will keep doing more and 2024 will be a much more engaging and high profile year for the LDC and NHS dentistry in north west London!
As opportunities for members to be involved in our work arise we will email out, but if you need to contact the LDC please do so on contact@ldc.org.uk You can also keep up to date with everything the LDC is doing on your behalf on our webpage.
