Charity
While dentistry is usually seen as a lucrative profession, there will always be practitioners who fall on hard times. Alan McCrorie meets Philip Sutcliffe, a trustee of BDA’s Benevolent Fund
A financial
lifeline C
“
harity sees the need, not the cause”, someone onc e wr o t e . For many outside
of the profession, there is perhaps a perception that dentists and their families do not need charity. Practitioners, it seems, are well- to-do people who seem to waltz between the raindrops of life’s many difficulties. However, that is not the case – not
now in 2011 and not in 1883, when the fledgling British Dental Association (BDA) founded its Benevolent Fund to care for dentists and their dependents when they found themselves in need. “You just don’t know what’s
around the corner,” said Philip Sutcliffe, retired east of Scotland dentist, Emeritus Professor of Preventive Dentistry, Edinburgh Postgraduate Dental Institute and a trustee of the ‘Ben Fund’. Philip, now 76, who studied at
Leeds University in the early 1950s and from the 1960s pursued a career in child dentistry, made the Ben Fund his focus in retirement. A Registrar at Eastman Dental
Hospital (in London) and also at Northwestern University in Chicago for a year after gradu- ating in 1959, Philip later became professor at the Edinburgh Univer- sity Dental School. His message to colleagues today
is a simple one: the fund has much to do and it needs the giving to continue
20 Scottish Dental magazine
– the generations come and go, but the problems remain. Indeed, they are growing. “The biggest change that’s
happened over the years, and this is going back before my time, is that the fund used to be for making provision for families after a death,” said Philip. “There’s been a considerable
change, especially over the last decade, and now it’s common for us to be looking after and receiving applications from dentists of working age. In fact, last year 30 per cent of applicants were under 39. “That’s a big shift. The other
thing is that money is more tricky these days. There’s not as much of it around and dentists are suffering like everybody else.” In 2010, the Ben Fund has given
aid to more than 102 dentists and their families. The numbers of the needy have
increased over the past three years and there is a sadly familiar litany of problems they face. “Why do dentists turn up to us?”
he said. “Well, mismanagement of money is not unusual but, after that, physical and mental ill-health,
accidents, marital breakdown, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, personal debt, growing old and running out of money, difficulty in getting a performer’s number, removal from the dentist’s register, restrictions imposed by the General Dental Council – that’s the sort of thing that causes dentists to become necessitous.” He added: “‘Dentists’ and ‘neces-
sitous’ are not two words that are often found together but, sadly, it happens. “With more than half of our 37
new applicants on means-tested state benefits, they’re among the poorest people in Britain. And I think that is going to increase.”
Raising the funds Philip and his fellow trustees also find themselves working more with young families. “One of the aspects of working
with young families is that a single beneficiary may well represent an entire family,” said Philip. “Currently, we help 39 benefi- ciaries, but that represents 74 adults and children. The strength of the fund is found in the BDA’s branch
“Money is more tricky these days. There’s not as much of it around and dentists are suffering like everybody else”
Philip Sutcliffe
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