An OBE from the King at Nottingham’s City Hospital | Latest news

An OBE from the King at Nottingham’s City Hospital

A Speech and Language Therapist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has been awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours, for services to children with both cleft lip and palate.

Lorraine Britton is the lead speech and language therapist for the Trent Regional Cleft Network at City campus, which she started in 1998 and lovingly refers to as the ‘Cleft Palace’.

Lorraine says, “I have been working as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) in the NHS for 37 years and I set up the SLT service at NUH for Trent Regional Cleft Network from scratch in 1998.”

“So, I had to beg and borrow some space to work, beg some toys, a filing cabinet and then within a year of starting we became a regional centre.”

The service became a regional centre after a government report into cleft care and cleft outcomes showed that cleft outcomes in the UK were poorer than in Europe. And NUH’s Trent Cleft service was identified as one of the first regional centres with the responsibility of caring for children born with cleft lip & palate across Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire.

Lorraine said, “As part of this report we were told we had to start auditing speech outcomes because you cannot improve on what you don’t measure. Our focus on clinical audit has ensured the speech outcomes for children in cleft care both locally & nationally have improved significantly over the last 20 years.”

In 2001, records showed that 38% of children were able to return to school with speech within the normal range after help from NUH’s Trent Regional Cleft Network. Current records show 72% of children are now able to start school with no evidence of cleft in their speech.

1 in 700 children are born with a cleft lip and palate in the UK making it one of the most common birth anomalies and Lorraine Britton has seen and been instrumental in the vast improvements in prevention and rehabilitation that is now offered by the Trent Regional Cleft Network to children locally and nationally.

On receiving her OBE, Lorraine Britton said she was totally overwhelmed, “I feel so proud to be able to fly the flag for speech and language therapy and cleft care. I am hugely proud of being part of a team that has achieved these speech outcomes, and I am proud to have spent my whole career working in the NHS working with like-minded people who always put the family, children and patients first.”

“I’ve looked down the honours list and I’m going to fly my flag for cleft care and the NHS alongside Claudia Winkleman, Tess Daly and David Beckham!”

Lorraine Britton is our very own NUH celebrity and she will be receiving her well-deserved OBE in due course.