**2.2 Natalie's vision**

Decades later Natalie Morris came across the IQoro device, and it set her wondering if it would help her patients too. Natalie is a Speech and Language Therapist working in the UK and is the founder and CEO of The Feeding Trust a not-forprofit multi-disciplinary feeding clinic in the Midlands. During her 20-year career as an SLT, Natalie has become specialist in the assessment and treatment of communication and swallowing difficulties in children and young people (CYP) with neuro-developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries. She is the founder of Integrated Therapy Solutions Ltd. where she and her team help CYP with swallowing difficulties.

She looked at the scientific evidence supporting IQoro and was disappointed to find that there was none that was directly relevant to one of her main patient groups: CYP clients with Cerebral Palsy (CP). This was significant because NICE guidelines for the management of saliva control in CP [23] offer few options:


In other words, the only treatment options after considering compensatory strategies such as positioning, are drug therapy or surgery. But the Cochrane review of interventions for drooling in children with CP according to Walshe M, Smith M, Pennington L 2012 [24] concludes: "*There is no clear consensus on which interventions are safe and effective in managing drooling in children with CP*." Her own clinical

### *Dysphagia - New Advances*

observations and experiences over the years have been that difficulties with saliva control are a persistent problem with no real effective treatment.

Natalie reasoned that if IQoro could help patients with neurological problems such as after a stroke, then it might help her patients with CP too. And if there was no evidence to prove that it worked, then she would have to investigate it herself.

This chapter will show the success of these two clinicians' work.
