Craniofacial Teams

The Speech and Language team within the unit assess your child's speech and language development and assists you with getting the help your child needs through your local services if additional support is needed.

Speech and language therapists, or SLTs as they are sometimes known, work with children and young adults with communication and/or feeding difficulties.

SLTs help children who have problems with:

• Attention and listening skills
• Understanding instructions
• Putting words together
• Using the right speech sounds so they can make themselves understood
• Interacting with other children and understanding social rules
• Feeding and swallowing
• Communicating verbally

When will I see the speech and language therapist?

When you come to the Craniofacial Unit, there will usually be one of the team SLTs in the clinic. If not, you will be given information about our role and how to contact us if you are concerned about your child's speech, language and/or feeding.

Depending upon your child's age and diagnosis, the Craniofacial SLT team provides routine assessments at important stages in their development.

What will the speech and language therapist do during these assessments?

• Check whether you have any concerns about your child's communication skills, hearing or feeding
• Assess your child's communication skills
• Assess your child's feeding if appropriate
• Discuss with you whether your child would benefit from a referral to services near you. For example:
  • An SLT in your area for further assessment and therapy
  • An audiologist, if there are concerns about hearing
  • A paediatrician (a doctor who specialises in looking after children)
• Liaise with the people who can help – such as your health visitor or your child's teacher – if you are happy for us to do this
• Address your concerns and answer your questions

What websites would you recommend for further support and information?

Tiny Happy People
Speech and Language UK
National Literacy Trust - talk to your baby

How do I get in touch?

If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s communication or feeding skills, please contact:

 0121 333 9382

bwc.sltcraniofacial@nhs.net

 

Having a medical condition can bring up lots of difficult feelings. As Clinical Psychologists, we are here to support all family members with their journey.

We can help you with the following:

• How to manage difficult feelings you have about having a health condition and any treatment you may need. We may meet with you before your operation.
• We can help you cope with questions people might ask about the way you look.
• We offer workshops so you can meet other people who have a health condition.
• We can also support parents.
• We can signpost you to local services if extra support is needed.
• Appointments can be here at the hospital or over the computer or phone.
• You can contact us to ask for an appointment or you can ask your craniofacial doctor or clinical nurse specialist to refer directly to us.

We also meet with children to check on their development. We do this by using questionnaires or face-to-face ‘puzzle-type’ tasks.

If you need an assessment, we will try and arrange an appointment when you come to your craniofacial clinic.

After the assessment, a report will be written and we might make some suggestions that will help you. It might be helpful to give a copy of this report to your school.

Useful resources and websites

Information & support | Headlines Craniofacial Support
Changing faces
Centre of appearance-related research 

The effect on teeth can vary depending on your child’s diagnosis. Some children might have differences in shape, size or position due to their condition. They may have a problem with the structure of the teeth which may result in them being more susceptible to decay.

There might be spaces or not enough space for all of the grown up teeth to come into the mouth and some conditions may have an effect on the growth of jaws and the way teeth bite together.

If your child is diagnosed with a craniofacial condition, you will be seen by the paediatric dentists at various points in their journey. Frequency will vary depending on specific diagnosis, but all children with craniosynostosis will be followed up at key ages of 18months, 3,5,7,10 and 15 years old. We can offer phone, video or a face to face appointments.

Our key priority is to keep teeth healthy and prevent dental decay.  

To keep teeth healthy:

• Please take your child to see a family dentist before the age of one. We can help to support you to get a family dentist.
• Brush your child’s teeth twice daily with a fluoridated toothpaste - encouraging your child to spit out excess toothpaste — don't rinse after brushing.
• Avoid sugary snacks and drinks

A Practical Guide to Children's Teeth
Preventing Tooth Decay Infographic
BSPD Resources Poster

Orthodontists

An orthodontist is a dental specialist who looks to correct the position of the teeth and jaws

Orthodontic treatment (usually with braces) is most often used to improve the appearance and alignment of crooked, protruding or crowded teeth, and to correct problems with the bite of the teeth.

The benefits of orthodontics can include:

• Correction of dental crowding and straightening of your teeth
• Correction of your bite so the front and back teeth meet evenly
• Reducing the chance of damage to prominent teeth

If your child is diagnosed with a craniofacial condition, the surgical team will discuss when it is appropriate for you to be seen by an orthodontist. We usually aim for this initial appointment to be around 8-9 years old.

Many children with craniosynostosis will come to the eye department for an assessment of their visual development. 

A child’s head shape can sometimes affect vision in a few different ways:

• Some children with craniosynostosis will need glasses
• Some children with craniosynostosis are more likely to have a squint (misalignment of the movement of the eyes)
• Some children need to have regular assessment of their optic nerve health. 

By checking vision and eye health regularly, we can help to ensure each child has good and equal vision in each eye.

At an appointment in the eye department, you will meet different people:

• The orthoptist checks your child’s vision and observes how their eyes move. Younger children may need eye drops to make their pupils larger.  Eye drops do not hurt and the effect wears off within 4-6 hours. Older children may have photographs taken of the inside of their eyes.
• The ophthalmologist examines your child and their images.

Some children require regular monitoring of vision, but this can be undertaken at your local hospital and the results shared with the team at Birmingham.