Age needs one voice. Now it has:
Age UK is the new force combining Age Concern England and
Help the Aged in England.
Looking after your teeth is really important, especially as you get older. It helps you enjoy your food, smile with confidence and generally feel good about yourself.
To ensure your teeth and gums stay healthy, it is important to brush your teeth effectively and see a dentist regularly. If you have false teeth, regular check ups with a dentist are just as important.
Dentures are likely to need replacing every five years as the shape of your mouth changes. If, for health reasons, you have difficulty getting to a dentist, your dentist may be able to visit you or you may be eligible for treatment through the Community Dental Service.
Dental access centres have been introduced in many areas where it is difficult to find a dentist offering NHS treatment.
Patients needing emergency treatment take priority, so you may have to wait for a routine appointment.
The system is based on three bands of treatment and charges are reviewed annually. People on a low income may be entitled to help with the cost of NHS dental treatment.
To find out more about looking after your teeth, download our free factsheet
Download our factsheet Dental care: NHS and private treatment (PDF 178KB)
This factsheet explains the situation in England. Readers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should contact their respective Age UK organisation for information specific to where they live.
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A factsheet that looks at what to expect from NHS and private dental care.
Downloads
A download is a document (like a research report, a leaflet, or an application form) that can be transferred from our website to your computer. You can download a file, view it on your screen, print it, or save it to your computer.
PDF stands for ‘portable document format’.
Most downloads on this website are PDFs. We use this format to ensure that the document looks the same on everyone’s computer (website pages, by contrast, appear differently depending on how people have set their computer up).
Computers use a program called Adobe Acrobat Reader to download PDFs. If you try clicking on a link to download a PDF and it doesn’t work, you will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader onto your computer.
The process is quite straightforward and is free.
PDFs cannot be changed. If you need to be able to type into a downloaded document (for example, if we are offering a letter template that you need to put your name on) we will provide it as a Microsoft Word document rather than a PDF. You can then download it, type into it and save it to your computer.
Downloads will open on your computer in a new browser window.
Inside this window (below all your web browser menus), there will be a toolbar with options for you to print or save the document.
Close the browser window to return to the Age UK website.
We have made every effort to make our PDFs accessible to screen readers. Here is an overview of your accessibility options available in Acrobat Reader. Please ensure that you have downloaded the latest version of Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Reader website to ensure that they are included in your version of the programme.
You can use Adobe Reader to read a PDF out loud with the following shortcut keys:
You can also convert a PDF into a web page by following these steps:
You can convert a PDF document into a text file for use with other software and hardware such as Braille printers by opening the PDF and choosing ‘Save as text’ from the File menu.
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