Scotland has an aging population and more people choosing Scotland’s rural communities to work from home in a more nature based way. But what about the services people need to remain in these areas? These areas that need people to keep amenities going, providing employment to rural business and keeping money in the local area. This is called community wealth building.
Scotland’s community-based mobile dental hygiene service, Flying Smiles, is coming to your Community, offering a fresh and friendly approach to oral health by bringing care directly to where people live. Whether due to rural location, mobility issues, or the everyday challenges of access and cost, many people go without regular dental hygiene care. Flying Smiles is here to change that, one community at a time. Led by founder and registered dental hygienist Fiona Perry, Business Women of the year 2025, Finalist for the Women of Inspiration, and Sustainable Dentistry 2024. Denobi Award (from USA) 2023. The service includes a fully equipped mobile clinic truck for remote visits and a smaller hygiene van for home-based or care setting appointments. Every visit is designed to be welcoming, professional and focused on prevention.
“Our goal is to make dental hygiene feel local, personal and genuinely accessible,” says Fiona. “By working alongside each community we
visit, we’re not just improving smiles, we’re helping reduce health inequalities.”
Fiona has watched dentistry evolve over the 40 years she has been in the sector. I have met so many people who encounter health care inequalities when attending or taking those in their care to dental appointments.
Seeing this need for a more accessible method of delivering good quality dental hygiene, I established Flying Smiles – the first private mobile dental hygiene service in Scotland. Flying Smiles enables you to help yourself. Through listening and gentle coaching, we plan how you can maintain your dental health. We can then celebrate together with a big clean smile. Often a chat, a laugh, a cuppa and a wee piece of cake, for some isolated people it might be the only interaction with another person they have that day.
Fiona would love to see others join the network but dental professionals are restricted due to business registration costs. To run any health care business, quite rightly you are assessed and signed off my a government lead department called Healthcare Improvement Scotland. They charge SIX TIMES more that any other country in the UK? Have spoken to local MPs, SMPs it is time to make more noise and get the Scottish government to change the law and let health care professionals get out there and Improve the Healthcare of Scotland. Not be the reason to restrict it!