On a bracing winter morning in early December 2018, I’d taken the train from London to Winchester. The Hampshire cathedral city isn’t somewhere I know all that well, though what I’d heard – genteel, stolidly middle class, relentless topper of “best places to live” lists – certainly didn’t have much to do with poverty.
It wasn’t long until a more complex picture emerged. I’d arrived to shadow the dental charity Dentaid, whose helpers had parked their mobile treatment van outside a local homelessness centre, where a steady queue of people had already formed. Some of those I spoke to confessed to being so desperate for treatment that they’d resorted to their own brand of “DIY dentistry”. That meant precisely what it sounds like. Self-administered dental care – including extractions and fillings – applied without proper anaesthetic or professional training. This was simply reality for the rapidly growing number of people across the country who had found themselves locked out of affordable dental healthcare.
