Objectives The European Cleft Organisation strives to ensure that every child in Europe has access to high quality cleft treatment, care and support.  Working through a network of health professionals and patient groups we provide information for new families, promote best practice guidelines for health professionals, lobby governments and the EU for minimum standards of care. We will attain our objectives by:

• Lobbying at a European level through production of agreed guidelines in early cleft care. Once finalised these will be brought to the attention of all health ministries in Europe
• Organising and facilitate training in approaches to multidisciplinary care, early support, feeding, psychosocial adjustment issues …
• Providing an updated directory of cleft services and ongoing cleft research throughout Europe
• Acting as an umbrella resource and actively encourage the development of cleft networks and support organisations