A CHARITY which won Government praise for its work rehabilitating former prisoners is in the jaws of a dilemma.

Volunteers at the Catholic-faith project THOMAS -- Those on the Margins of Society -- are struggling to find dentists for their clients.

Damian Jordan, who works for the Blackburn-based charity, said many clients as ex-drug users often have poor teeth.

While they are not being discriminated against because they are ex-offenders and ex-drug users, he said, they simply could not find a dentist in the area with any spare capacity.

They are now considering appealing for a dentist to spare an hour in their own time to treat two clients who need treatment.

He said: "Quite often recovering drug addicts can have poor teeth because of their former lifestyle. They can also be more prone to tooth decay if they are recovering heroin user because methadone has a high sugar content.

"Although a lot of the problems have been brought on by themselves, if they don't get treatment it can have a knock-on effect and make them feel excluded."

Mr Jordan said he had twice contacted NHS Direct on behalf of clients to get the latest list of which NHS dentists were taking on patients.

But when he phoned the surgeries on the lists he found they were not taking on patients until January. Even a list on the internet he was told to try, which is updated daily, brought the same results.

He said any emergency work clients had needed had been done without problems but they needed a regular dentist to help their recovery.

THOMAS director Father Jim McCartney said: "These people are trying to regain dignity lost through their chaotic lifestyles of substance misuse. Dental care is an important aspect in their recovery."

Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust's emergency dental director Gordon Taylor said there was an acute shortage of dentists in East Lancashire but no one would go without emergency treatment.

He said the daytime service set up to take the pressure off general practitioners, Personal Dental Services, was hamstrung because of phenomenal demand and it also had to deal with so many emergency cases. The best service for the THOMAS clients, if they could not get a place on a regular register, was to access Community Dental Services, run from health centres in Blackburn and Darwen, but waiting lists were long.