What your service can do
To promote good oral health habits among children, think about how to do this across different areas of provision. For example:
- Healthy policies
- Healthy physical environment
- Healthy social environment
- Learning and skills for children
- Engaging children, staff and families
- Community partnerships
Think broadly and creatively about what is already happening in your service and things that can be done to maximise your service’s potential. These opportunities to promote oral health and healthy eating may also align with areas that you have identified as requiring improvement against the NQS – or identified as a ‘Strength’ if you’re doing it well – and can be included in your Quality Improvement Plan.
An important first step is to understand the specific issues within your service and identify priority areas of action. The Healthy Little Smiles Action plan template can help you step through this process.
Look over the messages under each of the 5 key oral health messages:
1. Baby teeth are important!
2. Drink well
3. Eat well
4. Clean well
5. Stay well
Thinking about your service – are there things you already do and/or areas you could improve on? Use the key oral health messages as a checklist for best practice guidelines.
Identify some opportunities for improvement (establish your services priorities)
- Outline the steps you will take to improve this area (the how)
- You could rank these in order of importance (and ability to make a change).
- Download Action Plan template
This web-based Healthy Little Smiles resource kit provides ideas for activities your service can undertake to embed oral health into various aspects of service delivery:
- Examples and practical strategies for each of the key oral health messages
- Practical tips and links to tip sheets, websites and other resources
