Childsmile funding: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the following information on Childsmile funding. 

Question 1) How many children have received ‘Childsmile’ support in the last five financial years (2018/2019, 2019/2020, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23). Please provide the targeted amount of children for each year as well as the figure of how many children actually received the support. 

Question 2) A breakdown of the funding amounts given to each health board to deliver Childsmile in the last five financial years (2018/2019, 2019/2020, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23) . 

Question 3) The Childsmile website states “In the Primary 7 age group dental health has never been better and on a Scotland level the target of 60% of this age group having no obvious decay has been met” 

Response

While our aim is to provide as much information as requested, in this instance we do not have all the information which you have requested. We have supplied information we have to question 2 in your list, please see below. 

Also the information you have request in question 1 & 3 is already available to the public. See links to questions 1 & 3 below:

Answer 1) With reference to Section 25 of FOISA. The data can be found in the relevant tables at https://www.child-smile.org.uk/professionals/research-and- evaluation/monitoring_reports.aspx up until 2018/19, when the latest evaluation report was published. These evaluations are carried out independently by the University of Glasgow’s Community Oral Health Section, and Scottish Government do not hold any further data on this. Evaluations were paused during Covid. 

Answer 2) An exemption under section s.29(1)(a) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested because some funding for Childsmile is provided through the Outcomes Framework. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. 

While we have historic breakdowns of the Childsmile funding which makes up part of this bundle, this was provided for the purposes of policy formulation only and may not reflect how NHS Boards have continued to apply funding in their local area. I have provided the value of the Outcomes Framework in each of the years requested below. 

Year	Outcomes Framework  (£m)
2018/19	66.2
2019/20	75.7
2020/21	71.9
2021/22	74.1
2022/23	74.1

In addition to the Outcomes Framework, specific in-year allocations for programme management costs are also made for Childsmile and I have set these out below. Allocations have not yet been made for 2022-23 and so these have not been included in the table. 

Board	2018/19  £	2019/20  £	2020/21  £	2021/22  £
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	-	119,673	119,673	119,673
NHS Fife	217,432	203,328	216,776	219,963
NHS Forth Valley	24,233	27,975	23,154	35,602
NHS Grampian	40,000	-	-	40,000
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	-	210,037	197,720	210,264
NHS Lanarkshire	100,596	107,809	112,634	94,698

Answer 3) With reference to Section 25 of FOISA.This statistic comes from the biannual independent NDIP reports, found at https://ndip.scottishdental.org/ndip-reports/. The last report undertaken for P7s was carried out in 2019. The 2021 report was interrupted due to Covid, and Scottish Government do not hold any further data on this. 

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy. 

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