CeTasSSD research and pathways meeting

Our CeTasSSD team met throughout the day to work on the data, data analysis, writing of papers, and how this translates into a speech pathway for kindergarten children.

Felicity Laurence, Lisa Johnson, Sharynne  McLeod, Sarah Verdon

LinkedIN post from CSU about our CLTT special issue

Communication is a human right, including for children with speech, language and communication needs, and children who communicate in non-dominant languages.
 
How can we make sure researchers truly listen to children with diverse communication abilities?
 
A new special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy brings together 17 papers from researchers in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK.
 
Charles Sturt University Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod and Charles Sturt PhD candidate Holly McAlister guest edited the special issue through the Children’s Voices Centre (CVC). CVC staff, affiliates, adjuncts and HDR students contributed six papers, with 19 CVC authors, two editors and eight peer reviewers involved.
 
In her open-access lead paper, Large listening ears are not enough: How can we mature in our practices to listen to children?, Sharynne asks how we can move beyond simply hearing children’s views to giving them an audience and the opportunity to influence decisions.

• Read the special issue: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/clta/42/2-3
• Read the lead paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02656590261477289
• Watch Sharynne’s two-minute overview: https://lnkd.in/gwR937fF
• Read Sharynne’s blog post about the Charles Sturt and CVC contributions: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2026/08/cvc-affilates-and-adjuncts-contribute.html

 
#ChildLanguage #InclusiveResearch #ChildrensVoices #CharlesSturtResearch

RHRI Affiliates | Living Well RHRCoP

Today I attended the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) Affiliates | Living Well RHRCoP (Rural Health Research Communities of Practice) lead by Prof Julian Grant.

Staff Service Centre - new system for CSU

 Today I went to an update on the new Staff Service Centre - a new system for CSU to replace Cherwell.

Congratulations Sarah B

Dr Carolyn Gregoric and I were very pleased to receive the first full draft of Sarah Bartlett's PhD thesis today. What an important milestone. I printed it ready to read on the plane next week. I look forward to reading it from cover to cover. This is the beginning of the end of her thesis. Congratulations!

Congratulations Gift

Dr Kate Margetson and I were delighted to meet with Gift Kamonya who has just been accepted as a PhD student at Charles Sturt University. Congratulations Gift. We are excited to begin collaborating with you next year.

 

Launch of the NDRP project "Children as changemakers in public libraries"

Today was the launch of our National Disability Research Partnership (NDRP) project "Children as changemakers in public libraries". This meeting was an opportunity to introduce ourselves, understand the project and discuss plans going forward.

Here is our team: 

• A/Prof Kathy Cologon - Associate Director, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
• Tim Cologon - Adjunct, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University 
• Dr Jo Grimmond - School of Education; Affiilate, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University 
• Dr Kasey Garrison - School of Communication and Library Studies; Affiilate, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
• Prof Philip Hider - School of Communication and Library Studies, Charles Sturt University
• Prof Sharynne McLeod - Director, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric - Research Manager, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
• Dr Shukla Sikder - School of Education; Affiilate, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University 
• Dr Zinnia Mevawalla - University of Strathclyde, UK
• Amanda Niland - The University of Sydney; Adjunct, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University 
• Aliza Salvador - Research assistant 

Background to the 2026 NDRP projects

• $4.92 million for 19 disability-led research projects, chosen from 176 applications. 
• The projects start between August and October 2026 and run for 12 months.
• They sit across three streams:

1. Safety of people with disability
2. Pathways to the elimination of restrictive practices
3. Accessible and inclusive communities

• Learn more about the 19 teams: https://content.ndrp.org.au/2026-funded-research-teams-announcement
• This research is funded by the NDRP through a grant from the Australian Government as an initiative under Australia's Disability Strategy 2021–2031. 

Information about our project

Children as Changemakers in Public Libraries

https://content.ndrp.org.au/2026-funded-research-teams-announcement#Accessible-Inclusive

"Children with disability are often excluded from research and decisions about the places and services they use. This project will work alongside children with disability in regional communities to understand what makes public places welcoming, accessible and inclusive for all children.

Kathy Cologon from the Children’s Voices Centre at Charles Sturt University leads the project, partnering with children, families, Bathurst Library and other regional NSW libraries, community organisations and First Nations stakeholders. Through creative and accessible workshops, children share experiences and ideas through drawing, storytelling, photography, Braille, Auslan and other forms of communication that work for each child. Children help guide the research, findings and resources through project workshops and an ongoing Children's Advisory Group."

Here is some additional information written by lead researcher:

Our successful research application to the National Disability Research Partnership (NDRP) has now been officially announced. The embargo lifted yesterday, so we finally share the news of this fantastic research! This was a highly competitive grant round, with just 19 projects funded from 176 applications, and we are delighted to be one of the successful recipients (with a grant of $281,278 plus GST).  
 
Our project, Children as Changemakers in Public Libraries, will work with around 100 children with disability in regional NSW to explore children’s experiences and ideas about accessibility, belonging and inclusion in their communities. Through accessible, creative research activities, children will share their perspectives on what makes communities welcoming and inclusive, the barriers children experience, and what could be done differently. Importantly, children with disability will help shape the research and its findings, with the aim of informing meaningful changes to community spaces, services, and policies. We will also work with the children, alongside a highly acclaimed author and illustrator with disability, to create accessible children’s books that share children’s ideas about inclusion with the wider community.
 
This project includes three members of our CVC team (Kathy Cologon, Sharynne  McLeod, Carolyn Gregoric), as well as four affiliates, two adjuncts and one external researcher. We are working in partnership with Bathurst Library and outreach libraries to ensure children with disability in regional communities have opportunities to influence how more accessible and inclusive communities are created.  
 
To make the news even more exciting, we have also just been notified that the Hon Jenny McAllister has selected just three of the funded projects to highlight in her media coverage, and ours is one of them! It’s fantastic to see this important research receiving national attention and recognition, and a wonderful opportunity to showcase the work of the Children’s Voices Centre and Charles Sturt University. As Bathurst Library is a key partner in the project, the Mayor of Bathurst will also contribute to the media coverage, making this a wonderful coming together of local and national recognition around research that places children with disability at the centre of creating more inclusive communities.  

 

Guest editors working on the LSHSS clinical forum

This morning Dr Helen L. Blake, A/Prof Kathy Cologon and I met to continue the editorial process for our Clinical Forum to be published in Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (LSHSS) titled "Children’s communication and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)"

https://academy.pubs.asha.org/call-for-papers/childrens-communication-and-the-united-nations-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child-crc/ 

We had 25 papers submitted, two have been rejected, 15 accepted (11 published), 8 in progress.

Dr Helen L. Blake, Prof Sharynne  McLeod, A/Prof Kathy Cologon

Two papers from this special issue were presented at the UNICEF UK seminar on 23rd October 2026: UNICEF UK CRARN: Voice Beyond Spoken Words: Implementing Article 12 for All Children - Part 2:

• Downey, B., Gibbs, L., & Grimmond, J. (2026). Upholding young children's right to child protection through quality relationships and policy. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00213
• McCormack, J. (2026). The dignity of children as the foundation of children's rights and speech-language pathology practice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00198 

 
 

Visit to The Treehouse by Prof Azizur Rahman

This afternoon Prof Azizur Rahman visited The Treehouse. Azizur is an affiliate at the Children's Voices Centre - but Wagga Wagga is his home campus - so he typically joins meetings online. It was good to welcome him in person.

Here is some information about this work: 

https://bjbs.csu.edu.au/schools/computing-mathematics-engineering/staff/profiles/professorial-staff/azizur-rahman  

 

Children Draw Playing

In 2024 we invited children across the world to submit drawings of themselves playing. We received 101 drawings from Mongolia and 83 drawings from Australia and nine other countries. We have uploaded the children's drawings to the Children Draw Talking Global Online Gallery. We have been working in small groups to write papers about this amazing dataset.

Today we met to consider the constructive feedback from the editor and reviewers from an international journal that is considering our first paper in the series. It was a productive meeting

Sharynne  McLeod, Helen L. Blake, Katrina Gersbach, Arifa Rahman, Carolyn Gregoric, Kasey Hillyar (Belinda Downey, Janine Greko)

 

CVC financial oversight

The Children's Voices Centre's small budget has excellent oversight. I am very appreciative of Gil Burmeister (CSU Finance) and Emma Hayes (CVC) for ensuring that we manage our finances responsibly to achieve the greatest impact.

 

GlobalTALES

What an inspirational meeting with Prof Marleen Westerveld this morning. We discussed our collaborations with A/Prof Ben Pham in Viet Nam and the GlobalTales research that she founded.

Here is the key paper describing the Global TALES work: 

Westerveld, M. F., Lyons, R., Nelson, N. W., Chen, K. M., Claessen, M., Ferman, S., Fernandes, F. D. M., Gillon, G. T., Kawar, K., Kuvač Kraljević, J., Petinou, K., Theodorou, E., Tumanova, T., Vogandroukas, I., Westby, C., & on behalf the Global, T. C. (2022). Global TALES feasibility study: Personal narratives in 10-year-old children around the world. PLOS ONE, 17(8), e0273114. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273114 

The supplementary file about themes is very interesting

Here is the website: www.globaltalesnetwork.com

 

 

Writing papers for our CeTasSSD grant

We have allocated our Mondays to writing papers for our CeTasSSD grant. Our data have been carefully entered, cleaned and analysed - and we are now making sense of what the data have told us.

Today Felicity Laurence, Sarah Verdon and I spent the day continuing to working on the 2025 Intelligibility in Context Scale data to be submitted to a special issue. It was an extremely productive day - and we were able to show how robust our data are. We built on the literature review that was written by Kate Crowe and the analysis that was completed by Nicola Ivory earlier this year. It's nearly ready to submit.

 

PUBLISHED CLTT Special issue: Listening to children with diverse communication abilities

I'm delighted that our special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy (CLTT) has been published

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/clta/42/2-3

The CLTT special issue is titled: "Listening to children with diverse communication abilities" and contains 17 papers from across the world.

Here is my lead paper that summarises the issue.

McLeod, S. (2026). Large listening ears are not enough: How can we mature in our practices to listen to children? Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 42(2-3), 94-109. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590261477289

This morning Holly McAlister and I celebrated being guest co-editors of the special issue  with A/Prof Suzanne Hopf, Holly's primary PhD supervisor. We reflected on all Holly had learned being a co-editor. 

Sharynne, Holly and Suzanne celebrating publication of the special issue

 

WHO DHEN Workstream 4 Subcommittee 3 Meeting

Tonight at 11pm the WHO DHEN Workstream 4 Subcommittee 3 Meeting occurred. The main topic discussed was the importance of plain language summaries. I also mentioned our new special issue for IJSLP based on the DHEN 40 actions.

NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) Research Inclusion Toolkit

This is a useful resource:

Welcome to the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) Research Inclusion Toolkit
Research inclusion is vital to enable everyone to contribute to, and benefit from, health and social care research. This toolkit is primarily aimed at health and social care researchers at all career stages. It is also for people who support and advise researchers, such as advisors in the NIHR Research Support Service and other colleagues across NIHR infrastructure, and colleagues supporting research design and delivery in universities, the NHS, local authorities, industry and charities.

https://rss-toolbox.nihr.ac.uk/resources/research-inclusion-toolkit/

Statistical analysis of our CeTasSSD data

Our population study of the speech of children in Tasmania has amazing data. We are enjoying the rigour of our statistical analysis with Dr Audrey Wang. We had some very interesting discussions about statistical assumptions and appropriate statistics today

Dr Audrey Wang, Sharynne McLeod, Felicity Laurence

 

Announcing our NDRP grant: Children as Changemakers in Public Libraries

Today we are able to announce our exciting new grant from the National Disability Research Partnership (NDRP) titled Children as Changemakers in Public Libraries. 

Here is the announcement 

3. Children as Changemakers in Public Libraries
Children with disability are often excluded from research and decisions about the places and services they use. This project will work alongside children with disability in regional communities to understand what makes public places welcoming, accessible and inclusive for all children.

Kathy Cologon leads the project, partnering with children, families, Bathurst Library and other regional NSW libraries, community organisations and First Nations stakeholders. Through creative and accessible workshops, children share experiences and ideas through drawing, storytelling, photography, Braille, Auslan and other forms of communication that work for each child. Children help guide the research, findings and resources through project workshops and an ongoing Children's Advisory Group.

 

https://content.ndrp.org.au/2026-funded-research-teams-announcement  

The National Disability Research Partnership funds research led by and with people with disability. This will help to facilitate a collaborative and inclusive disability research program that builds evidence for successful policy and practice.

Their website states:

Nineteen projects, led by and with people with disability, get underway from August to October 2026 and run for 12 months.

NDRP has awarded $4.92 million to 19 disability-led and inclusive research projects, selected from a highly competitive field of 176 applications requesting a combined $46.27 million. Each of the awarded projects sit across three funding streams:

• Safety of people with disability: Ten projects addressing safety risks people with disability face across housing, agriculture, health care, the justice system and community life.
• Pathways to the elimination of restrictive practices: 3 projects building the evidence base to reduce and end the use of restrictive practices
• Accessible & Inclusive Communities: 6 projects working to make services, public spaces and community life more inclusive.

"Research is stronger and more relevant when people with disability help set its direction, make decisions and lead the work." NDRP CEO, Mary Sayers

Seven of the recipient teams will continue to build on the co-design work NDRP funded in its first round of 2025. This research will move the ideas that were developed with people with disability into the next phase of research. 

Planning a grant

 How lovely to plan a grant with Dr Nicole McGill

 

Visitors to CVC in late September and early October

CVC has welcomed a number of visitors to The Treehouse during late September and early October including:

1. Rory Cumming - work experience student
2. Wes Gleeson - new CSU staff member 
3. Ally Barrett - research assistant on the CeTasSSD grant 
4. Emma Scanlon - research assistant on the CeTasSSD grant
5. Dr Audrey Wang - statistician on the CeTasSSD grant