The Town Hall Foundation (THF), based in West Yorkshire, is the charitable arm of Town Hall Dental, providing essential oral healthcare treatments and education for at-risk individuals. Wesleyan donated £10,000 towards their mobile dental van.
The Town Hall Foundation work with homeless charities to provide oral healthcare for people who can’t access dentistry. Rachel Dilley, Chief Operating Officer / Director at THF shared:
“I started my dental career as a registered dental nurse and it’s carried on from there. I always thought about how can I give back to the community when I’m only a dental nurse.
“I have a passion for helping other people and it became really apparent that there’s a lot of people that can’t access dentistry, such as people in care homes, children and adults with learning disabilities, refugees, women suffering domestic violence, homeless, and ex-homeless.”
The £10,000 donation from Wesleyan will go towards their £150,000 project of building a mobile dental van. Rachel continued:
“Since the pandemic we’ve probably seen 2,000 unregistered patients. The mobile dental van will support our work to look after the homeless and refugees. By working with sports clubs we want the dental van to go to football grounds and other sporting grounds to do free oral cancer checks there and then.
“The van will also support children that are autistic as it’s hard to get them to the dentist so the mobile van can go to them or to their schools instead.
“During the pandemic there’s been a massive impact in people getting diagnosed with oral cancer, a lot of people say they haven’t got time to get a check-up so this is a solution to preventing or diagnosing oral cancer early.”
To raise the rest of the funds for the dental van, Town Hall Foundation has published it’s first educational book for young children and children with autism to learn about dental care. In the meantime, the THF will be setting up oral cancer screening at sports events, supermarkets for their outreach work supported by the donation from Wesleyan. Rachel concluded:
“It’s just so heart-warming to know that we’re actually giving back to somebody and reducing suffering, it’s a free gift and I’m just so pleased we’ve been able to provide support thanks to Wesleyan.”
For more information on the Town Hall Foundation, visit: townhallfoundation.co.uk
