A local community dental team has scooped a national award for their work to help patients with dementia.

The team from Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust won the award for the dementia friendly organisation in the health and social care category at The Alzheimers Society Dementia Friendly Awards yesterday (30 November).

Allison Bingham, Deputy Director for Specialist Inpatient Services, Dental Services and Administration Services said: “We are absolutely delighted to win this award. We always aim to make sure that patients and carers using the service have the best possible experience and that oral health is still a priority to patients living with dementia. We’ve created an environment which is calm and supportive for those people living with dementia.”

Work that the team has done to become more dementia friendly includes introducing a dental passport which is designed to organise relevant information in both pictures and words, detailing the patient’s needs and what matters to them. It is designed so that the patient or carer can take it to dental visits, which prevents the patient or carer having to answer multiple questions.

Allison added: “The teams have looked at every area of our service to see how we can make it more dementia friendly, that has included developing an oral health assessment template for use at our dementia assessment unit as well as putting together an oral health-package for all staff who work there to increase their knowledge of oral health. The dental clinical teams have also improved their own knowledge and learning around dementia by completing college courses which are now available for staff on their educational development programme.”