Louise is a Senior Specialist Speech & Language Therapist on the Cleft Lip & Palate Team at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She specialised very early on in her career due to a love of phonetics and a keen interest in cleft related speech difficulties. Louise moved to her present position in 2010. In her current role, she is involved in the assessment and management of children and adults with cleft palate and non-cleft velopharyngeal dysfunction. She provides cleft lectures to undergraduate SLT students, supervises students on placement and provides training to Cleft Link SLTs and community based SLTs in the West Midlands.

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Before working at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, she worked on the Cleft Lip & Palate Team at Children's Health Ireland, Temple Street, Dublin (formerly known as The Children’s University Hospital Temple Street). In this role, she helped to organise training days for Speech & Language Therapists and a Cleft Lip & Palate National Study Day for medical professionals. Louise provided cleft lectures to undergraduate SLT students at Trinity College Dublin. During her time in Dublin, she also studied for a Masters degree which she obtained in 2006. She has presented papers at the CFSGBI (Craniofacial Society of Great Britain & Ireland) Annual Scientific Conference and at the IASLT (Irish Association of SLTs) Conference.

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Clinically, Louise is interested in the early feeding management of babies born with Pierre Robin Sequence, early intervention in children with cleft palate and in children with 22q11 deletion syndrome. Louise’s research interests include speech outcomes for children with Pierre Robin Sequence and early intervention. Louise has recently been involved in the publication of a paper, along with her colleagues, comparing the speech outcomes of children born with Pierre Robin Sequence to a cohort of children born with isolated cleft palate only.