CeTasSSD Speech Census wrap up

This week our CeTasSSD Speech Census team met to celebrate meeting so many wonderful 4- to 5-year-olds during our research. We also reflected on what went well and what can be changed in the future.

Here are our statistics so far:  

• 1207 Kinder students in the state
• 981 consent forms returned (226 not returned)
• 945 consent forms provided consent (36 did not provide consent)
• 874 assessments attempted (45+ more not yet entered into the spreadsheet)
• 14 children did not give assent and 8 could not be assessed (e.g., due to disability)
• 859 (+45) children have completed the International Speech Screener (ISS)

Thanks so much to the children and schools (especially the SSCs and TAs). Thanks to our wonderful CeTasSSD research team. Hooray team!

Helen Blake, Sharynne McLeod, Felicity Laurence, Emma Scanlon, Ally Barrett met for 2 hours to debrief, summarise, and plan

Team members not pictured: Sarah Verdon, Kate Crowe, Lisa Johnson 

CVC2026 update

Today's CVC2026 conference update:

• 302 registrations from 33 countries
• 32 abstracts submitted so far - closing 11 May 2026 

Registrants' countries:  Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Fiji, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

CVC's Finance Business Partner visits The Treehouse

Today Gil Burmeister, the Finance Business Partner for CVC visited The Treehouse and provided extremely useful advice and updates for Emma Hayes (our new Senior Administration Officer) and myself. Thanks Gil.

LSHSS special issue on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

Today Helen Blake, Kathy Cologon and I met to check the status of the 23 manuscripts in our clinical forum: Children’s communication and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Nine manuscripts have been accepted or will be accepted soon. The remainder are under review with the reviewers or editors, or have been rejected.

It is going to be a landmark special issue with diverse and thought provoking content. 

Children Draw Health analysis planning

Children Draw Health analysis planning was led by Dr Helen L. Blake and Dr Carolyn Gregoric today. We will be analysing the children's drawings using the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) and the Global Report on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities

https://www.who.int/teams/noncommunicable-diseases/sensory-functions-disability-and-rehabilitation/global-report-on-health-equity-for-persons-with-disabilities 

Sharynne, Tamara, Helen, Lysa, Belinda, Carolyn, Kathy

 

Visitors from Sri Lanka

It was wonderful to welcome visitors from Sri Lanka to The Treehouse this week: Ms Yasaara Kaluaratchi (Co-founder and Director of Academics of Prospects College of Higher Education), and Mr Somesh Perera (Founder and Chairman of Prospects Education). They were hosted by Trent Pohlmann (Head, International Partnership Development, Charles Sturt University).

Here is information about their relationship with CSU: https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/charles-sturts-international-expansion-to-underpin-regional-education-and-research-commitment2 

Sharynne  McLeod, Mr Somesh Perera, Ms Yasaara Kaluaratchi, Trent Pohlmann, Tamara Cumming

Grants submitted

Congratulations to A/Prof Kathy Cologon who has submitted two grants on behalf of the Children's Voices Centre. They are good grants - we hope they are successful.

 

Ladders, trees and matrixes: Child-focused participatory action research frameworks for children with diverse communication abilities

Congratulations to our PhD student Holly McAlister who has just had the following article accepted for publication:

McAlister, H., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2026, in press April). Ladders, trees and matrixes: Child-focused participatory action research frameworks for children with diverse communication abilities. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. 

Here is the abstract:

Several frameworks – including Hart’s Ladder of Participation (1992), Shier’s Models for Participation (2001, 2010, 2019), and the Lundy Model (2007) – have been developed to support children’s genuine participation as researchers. These child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) frameworks claim to increase children’s capacity to share their thoughts and opinions to change their lives and communities. This narrative review involved systematic database searches to identify application of these key C-PAR frameworks, and the extent of child participation by children with diverse communication abilities, particularly within the field of speech and language therapy research. Thirty-three papers were identified for descriptive analysis. Children included in these studies were aged between 2-18 years. Children were from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Jamaica, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Most studies included children with speech, language, and communication needs (n = 32, 96.99%) and one paper (3.03%) included children with a swallowing disorder. Most studies (n = 26, 78.79%) consulted children at the data collection stage, often using visual supports, but fewer papers also involved children at other stages of the research process (n = 7, 21.21%). Of these 33 papers, only 4 (12.12%) directly applied one of the C-PAR frameworks. Within speech and language therapy research, we can mature in our practice of involving children with diverse communication needs in all stages of a research project, to support their genuine participation as researchers.

Launch of Phon 4

Congratulations to Yvan Rose and Greg Hedlund and team who launched Phon 4 today (their Thursday 16th April - our Friday 17th April).

https://www.phon.ca/phon-manual/getting_started.html 

Our CeTasSSD team were very honoured to work with Yvan to install and begin using Phon 4 on its first day of release. Yvan has been very generous preparing our speech sample and teaching us how to use it effectively to analyse the data we have collected from our Tasmanian Speech Census.

Helen, Sharynne, Emma, Felicity, Yvan, Ally - meeting #2

Yvan, Emma, Helen, Felicity, Sharynne  - meeting #1

A colourful time of year

It is autumn (fall) at The Treehouse. This evening a king parrot was looking stunning amongst the autumn leaves.

A few days later outside my window...

Sharynne, Tamara, Emma with the CSU elm trees

Poplar trees are gorgeous across the Central West at this time of year

CVC community bimonthly meeting - 16 April 2026

 Today was our CVC community bimonthly meeting. What a celebration of accomplishments and our meaningful and authentic plans for 2026-2027.

Children draw health: Planning data analysis

This afternoon Carolyn, Helen and I continued making plans for the analysis of the Children Draw Health data based on our discussion at the WHO meeting last week to focus on the World Report on Disability (factors contributing to health inequities). We have 10 CVC affiliates with ethics approval to undertake the analysis with us when we are ready.

CET Speech Census - Last week

We are working hard to finalise our CET speech census this week before the children all go on school holidays. We have just over 1000 consent forms returned. I have entered data for 733 assessments - but our team has done more than this (yay team!). I entered the data Ally gave me this afternoon for another 46 assessments. Helen did over 30 today (I haven't entered these yet). What an amazing team - and incredible children and teaching staff.

Ally and Sharynne heading to The Nest in The Treehouse for more data collection with the children

Sharynne, Ally Barrett and Emma Scanlon 
at the end of a big day assessing wonderful children

CVC on the CSU Office of Engagement and Enterprise webpage

 The Children's Voices Centre has been profiled on the Charles Sturt University Office of Engagement and Enterprise: https://www.csu.edu.au/office/engagement-enterprise/community/programs-and-initiatives/initiatives/childrens-voices-centre

CVC2026 conference organisation and scientific review committee

This morning our CVC team met to continue planning CVC2026. We were so pleased to see that we have received 286 registrations and over 20 abstracts from the following countries (these abstracts will now be considered by our Scientific Review Committee): Australia, China, Ireland, Israel, Nepal, New Zealand
Nigeria, Poland, United Kingdom, United States.

Scientific review committee meeting (16th April 2026)

Working with Cathie to publish her Masters thesis

Today Cathie Matthews and I met to begin the work to submit a journal article based on her Masters' thesis. Here is Cathie's thesis: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/supporting-2-year-olds-communication-collaborations-between-careg/ 

Survey of the speech intelligibility in children with speech sound disorders in Northern Vietnam

The following article has been published in Vietnamese. It is based on the Masters' thesis of Mrs Hang, supervised by Dr. Ben Pham and myself a few years ago.

Nguyễn Thị Hằng, Phạm Thị Bền, Sharynne McLeod, & Phạm Thị Vấn (2026). Khảo sát tính dễ hiểu lời nói của trẻ có rối loạn âm lời nói ở miền bắc Việt Nam [Survey of the speech intelligibility in children with speech sound disorders in Northern Vietnam]. Tạp chí Y học Việt Nam (Vietnam Medical Journal), 558, số 1/2026, 84-88. https://tapchiyhocvietnam.vn/index.php/vmj/article/view/16928

Here is the English abstract

Objective: This study investigated the speech intelligibility of children aged 4–5 years with speech sound disorders (SSD) in Northern Vietnam, using the Vietnamese Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS-VN). Methods: A total of 51 children were evaluated through caregiver questionnaires and direct assessments, including the ICS-VN, hearing screening, oromotor assessment (OMA), and the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (VSA). Results & Conclusion: The mean ICS-VN score was 3.6 (SD = 0.6). Familiar listeners rated the children’s speech as more intelligible than unfamiliar listeners. ICS-VN scores were negatively correlated with the age at which the child produced their first meaningful word (r = –0.49, p < 0.001).

 

Holly's presentation at The Treehouse

Yesterday Holly McAlister (my PhD student) presented an excellent seminar at the Children's Voices Centre Community Research Presentation. Her presentation was titled:

Weaving together culturally responsive and participatory action frameworks

Abstract: Frameworks developed in a Western context have dominated academic research for decades. However, it is vitally important when conducting research with communities from diverse cultural backgrounds that culturally responsive frameworks and methodologies are applied to support culturally safe and appropriate engagement for these communities. Child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) frameworks, such as the Lundy model (2007), have been developed on the background of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Hopf and colleagues developed the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework in 2021, with the aim of supporting culturally responsive practices on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intraprofessional, and interprofessional levels. Research methodologies have been developed by Pasifika scholars to support culturally responsive research engagement for Pacific Islander communities and include but are not limited to the Samoan fa’afaletui (Tamasese et al., 1997) and Tongan kakala (Johansson Fua, 2014; Thaman, 1997) methodologies. This presentation will compare research frameworks and methodologies developed within Western and Pasifika contexts for child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) and cultural responsiveness. The relationships between Western and non-Western methodologies and the process of decolonisation of academia and scholarship will also be discussed.

Biography: Holly McAlister is a speech-language pathologist living and working on Wiradjuri country in Young, NSW. Holly completed an Honours degree in 2020 which looked at multilingual Fijian children’s speech sound development. Holly’s PhD research project brings together culturally responsive research frameworks and applies these to the question of how we can provide culturally responsive speech-language pathology services to children and families with Pacific Islander heritage, particularly those living in the diaspora in countries such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Holly has presented her research at national and international conferences in the Pacific, Asia and North America. Holly is also passionate about supporting children’s voices in research and advocacy for the regional allied health workforce.

It was very lovely to have her working in The Beehive at The Treehouse. She brought a bee to add to our collection of bees from visiting scholars around the world.

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Panel D

I am a member of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Panel D: Education, Psychology & Public Health. Today we met for 2 hours to consider the Academy Fellowship nominations. It has been a fascinating discussion. The people on the Panel are: Don Byrne, Chair (Psychology), Helen Skouteris, Deputy Chair (Health Sciences), Anne Castles (Psychology), Kim Cornish (Psychology), Henry Jackson (Psychology), Russell Tytler (Education), Jenny Gore (Education), Sharynne McLeod (Health Sciences), Julie McLeod (Education), Peng Bi (Health Sciences). The committee is supported by Chris Hatherly (Academy National Office) and Zoe Perry (Academy National Office).

WHO bi-montly meeting with CVC

This evening we met with Dr Mél Gréaux from the Disability Programme at the World Health Organization to discuss the Children's Voices Centre progress on our 2-year project to consider health equity for children with disability. Our research is progressing from action to publications and presentations - and has already has been influential in presentations at WHO (Fiji and Geneva) and UN. We discussed future plans for audience and influence of this research, which may include COSP at the UN in June.  

Holly McAlister, Sharynne  McLeod, Mél Gréaux, Tamara Cumming, Kate Crowe, Helen Blake, Belinda Downey, Kate Freire, Kathy Cologon