Margaret Walker awarded MBE


© Downing Street Studios, Farnham, Surrey 1997

Margaret Walker, Chief Speech and Language Therapist and Honorary Senior Lecturer, St. Georges Medical School, London, was awarded an MBE for services to Health Care in the June 1997 Queen's Birthday Honours' List.

Known worldwide as the designer of the successful communication programme Makaton, for children and adults with communication and learning difficulties, she has also made a significant contribution to the training and training curricula of medical personnel and other health care professionals in developing their skills and raising their awareness of the importance of effective comunication in their work with service users, particularly those with disabilities.

Appointed in 1980 as the first Speech and Language Therapist at St. George's Medical Hospital School, London, when the first Chair of Psychiatry of Mental Handicap in the United Kingdom was created, she continues her work there in the Department of Psychiatry of Disability.