Dr Debbie Sell is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Outcomes and Experience Research in Children’s Health, Illness and Disability (ORCHID), based at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Previously in managerial, clinical and lead roles, Debbie has latterly focused on research, and clinical practice in the North Thames Regional Cleft Service, together with teaching, mentoring and supervising colleagues. She continues to practice clinically as an Independent Speech and Language Therapist.

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Debbie’s research interests include the development and testing of perceptual speech outcome tools in cleft palate/VPI, including the UK clinical screening tool GOS.SP.ASS. and the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech (CAPS-A), used nationally and internationally. She has been involved in multicentre studies of speech outcome including the Eurocleft study, the national CSAG and CCUK studies, and the Americleft study. She has contributed to outcome studies of cleft/secondary speech surgery, speech prosthetics and speech therapy intervention. Her current research includes the investigation of parent-led speech therapy intervention in young children with cleft palate with Triona Sweeney (the PLAT project, now renamed Speech At Home) and evaluation of services for children and young people with 22q11DS, evidence used by the All Party Parliamentary Group.

 

Debbie has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications, 16 chapters and is the co-editor of two textbooks. She has co-produced three teaching videos.

 

She has received several awards including an OBE for services to the NHS, Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, featured as one of the Independent on Sunday’s top ten speech and language therapists and was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the UCL Institute of Child Health, and previously Honorary Visiting Professor at City University and De Montfort University, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.