Global knowledge in 131 languages and dialects about children’s speech development, assessment, and intervention

 The following manuscript has been accepted for publication

McLeod, S. & Blake, H. L. (2026, in press February) Global knowledge in 131 languages and dialects about children’s speech development, assessment, and intervention. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.

Here is the abstract

This paper exhorts communication specialists to look beyond English language knowledge by providing evidence to disrupt the unsubstantiated belief that there are few assessment and intervention resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech by. The Multilingual Children’s Speech website https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home has curated 1,337 (mostly free) resources for supporting multilingual children’s speech acquisition, assessment, and intervention in 131 of the world’s languages and dialects (86 languages). Specifically, there are 658 speech acquisition studies in 55 languages, 423 speech assessment resources in 77 languages, and 178 speech intervention resources in 21 languages. This free website includes links to assessment tools, intervention manuals, journal articles, books, chapters, theses, and video recordings for 16 of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world and many minority languages, Indigenous languages (e.g., Māori, Samoan, Sesotho, Setswana, Warlpiri, isiXhosa, Zapotec, isiZulu) and languages and dialects impacted by colonization and slavery (e.g., African American English, Fiji English, Jamaican Creole, Tok Pisin). Only 17.95% of the resources are about English, with 51.68% about 39 other Indo-European languages, and 30.37% about 46 languages belonging to 15 non-Indo-European language families. Previous analyses of curated knowledge about children’s development in psychology and linguistics have found a WEIRD bias “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies”; however, only 29.07% of the languages included on the Multilingual Children’s Speech website are WEIRD. While only 1.23% of the 7000 world languages are represented on the website, these assessment and intervention resources will continue to grow due to ongoing work of multilingual communication specialists across the globe. 

Scoping review results presented at the meeting with the World Health Organization

Congratulations to Dr Kate Freire for leading the team who has been undertaking the scoping review for our project with the World Health Organization Disability team. Here are some of the results presented at our meeting with the WHO tonight 

Identification and Selection of Studies 

The search strategy identified 10,027 records for screening after duplicates had been removed and 361 records from NGO website searches and citation screening of included reports. Title and abstract screening resulted 9,082 records being excluded and the full texts of 1306 reports were subsequently obtained for review. Thus, 62 reports from 59 studies were included in the review. 

Characteristics of Studies 

The majority of the records (n = 54, 87%) were papers, with n = 8 (13%) theses. The majority of records n = 36 (61%) were from the later half of the review period (2011-2025). Twenty-one countries provided the healthcare settings for the children (United Kingdom n = 16, Canada n = 7, Brazil n = 5, Australia n = 4, Denmark n = 4, United States n = 4, Ireland n = 3, Türkiye n = 2, China n = 1, India n = 1, Iran n = 1, Israel n = 1, Mauritania n = 1, Norway n = 1, Pakistan n = 1, Portugal n = 1, Singapore n = 1, South Africa n = 1, South Korea n = 1, Spain n = 1, Sweden n = 1). In addition, one study included children from three countries: United States, Canada and Australia (Ahlawat et al., 2024).

Supporting young German children’s speech and language development

This week's weekly research presentation at the Children's Voices Centre

Children's Voices Centre community research lunch

Supporting young German children’s speech and language development
Wiebke Freese
University of Lübeck, Germany

Communication is the key to the world, and children are our future. However, some children need support in their communication development, for example because their speech and language is not developing as it should. This has an impact on children’s futures. This is where speech pathologists can help. They identify the exact causes and support the children with specific interventions. This requires knowledge of speech and language acquisition and specific tools that facilitate identification and differential diagnosis in order to support the right children with the right strategies.
Most of the knowledge about children’s speech and language development is available for English. Since development varies between languages, specific knowledge is also needed for languages other than English. This is where my project comes in: it aims to help gather data on German-speaking children in order to better support them in their development. In this presentation, I will outline the research we conducted with 445 children with and without speech sound disorders, aged two to six years. Using a longitudinal design, we assessed them in different ways (e.g., consistency, non-word repetition, stimulability) to better understand their development and to find tools to identify needs early.

20 CVC staff and affiliates attended from across Australia

Support from the DVC-R's office

The Children's Voices Centre is overseen by the Deputy Vice Chancellor-Research. We are very grateful for their support in many ways. Today, I met with Nilima Mathai to discuss our communications (e.g., newsletter) and administration support requirements. We currently have an advertisement to hire another senior administration officer too.

 

Collaboration activities between WHO and Charles Sturt University (2025-2026)

Collaboration activities between WHO and Charles Sturt University (2025-2026)
Views of children and young people with disabilities about health and the health system

The Children's Voices Centre staff and affiliates have had a number of meetings this week. We are so proud of our achievements from 2025 and look foward to finalising the work during 2026.

CVC-WHO team meeting - 10 Feb 2026

Scoping review team - lead by Dr Kate Freire - 9 Feb 2026

 Objective of the collaboration (2025-2026)
•    “The collaboration between WHO and Charles Sturt University will contribute to WHO’s efforts in supporting Member States to implement the actions and recommendations from the [WHO Global report on health equity for persons with disabilities]. More specifically, the collaboration activities will help to collect the latest evidence to support Member States promote engagement of communities and other stakeholders (particularly with children and young people with disabilities).”
•    “The overarching aim of these activities will be to provide guidance to WHO on how they could support Member States better understand the views of children and young people with disabilities, and integrate them in health system planning.”
 

Research team
•    World Health Organization Disability Programme (Switzerland): Dr Mélanie Gréaux
•    Charles Sturt University, Children’s Voices Centre (Australia): Prof Sharynne McLeod, A/Prof Kathryn Crowe, A/Prof Suzanne C. Hopf, Prof Sarah Verdon, Prof Julian Grant, Dr Lysa Dealtry, Dr Belinda Downey, Dr Kate Freire, Dr Helen L. Blake, Dr Carolyn Gregoric, and Holly McAlister, A/Prof Kathy Cologon

Research activities
During 2025 research activities were undertaken “to build evidence on the experiences and perspectives of children and young people with disabilities on health and access to healthcare services”. 

Monthly progress meetings were held with WHO and CSU were held (typically Thursday 7pm-8pm Australian time).

Two main research activities were planned over the 2-year period (2025-2026)

Activity #1: A world-wide online qualitative study to explore children and young people with disabilities’ views about health and their experiences in health services. 
Activity #2: A scoping or systematic review on the experiences of children with disabilities in the health sector. 

 Presentations (World Health Organization/United Nations)
•    76th Session of the World Health Organization Regional Committee for the Western Pacific (RCM76) | Nadi, Fiji | October 2025 | Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Helen L. Blake, Holly McAlister https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2025/10/76th-session-of-world-health.html
•    Launch WHO Disability Health Equity Network Meeting | Geneva, Switzerland | 12-13 November, 2025 | Dr Mélanie Gréaux, Prof Sharynne McLeod https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2025/11/world-health-organization-disability.html
•    World Children's Day event at Charles Sturt University with  David Ohana, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer, United Nations Foundation https://unfoundation.org/who-we-are/our-people/david-ohana/ | 20th November, 2025| A/Prof Kathy Cologon, A/Prof Tamara Cumming https://alumni.csu.edu.au/news-and-events/events/industry/from-regional-roots-to-global-impact-kids-interview-un-changemaker-david-ohana 

Outputs
Report
•    Children draw health to advance health equity: Insights from children with disabilities (lay-person’s report) https://cdn.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/4506148/CVC-Children-draw-health-2025-Fiji-submission.pdf

Art exhibitions 
•    Children Draw Health Global Online Gallery https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/research/childrens-health
•    Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) exhibition (November 2025-January 2026) https://bathurstart.com.au/exhibitions-events/cvc-children-draw-health/ (Opening Night Event: Friday 21 November – A/Prof Tamara Cumming guest speaker)

Research outputs
Journal article (submitted)
•    McLeod, S., Gregoric, C., Downey, B., Cumming, T., Cologon, K. & Gréaux, M. (2025, submitted October). Children’s perspectives about health and healthcare: A global arts-based study focusing on children with disabilities [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Charles Sturt University. 

CVC2026 themes

Today the CVC staff reviewed and decided on the themes for the Children's Voices Conference 2026 (CVC2026) and will update our CVC website to align with these.

1.    Children’s rights, voices, and perspectives
2.    Children’s inclusion
3.    Children’s communication 
4.    Children’s learning and activities 
5.    Children’s health and disability
6.    Children’s services workforce and policy

This discussion is very important in the journey of the Children's Voices Centre. Our original themes (listed below) were based on the research undertaken by the end of 2024 when we were building the website, and before we had hired staff and had affiliates join the centre.

2024 CVC themes (now superseded):

1. Children's voices
2. Children's speech language and communication needs
3. Multilingual children's speech
4. Early childhood education and workforce needs
5. Children's activities
6. Children's health 

Index for The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World has 80 chapters and is over 1500 pages. Most of the chapters are structured around a template to support comparisons across languages. Creating an index for the Handbook is a large task requiring attention to detail and a lot of pattern matching. I am so pleased that Wiebke Freese has worked with the template to create the index for chapters 6-80. Wiebke is visiting the Children's Voices Centre during February and is a PhD student at the University of Lubeck (Universität zu Lübeck), Germany. Her supervisor, Prof Annette Fox-Boyer co-authored the chapter on German speech development. Wiebke said she was surprised and impressed that there is so much research about children's speech across the world. Thanks Wiebke for supporting children's speech - you are a superstar!

Wiebke Freese working in The Beehive at CSU

Discussing the index with Dr Helen L. Blake and the CSU copyeditor Dr Mark Filmer

CLTT special issue

 Holly McAlister and I have been working on the Child Language Teaching and Therapy special issue for about a year now. On Friday we did a stocktake:

• 5 accepted
• 5 rejected
• 5 minor revisions (awaiting reviewers/authors)
• 5 major revisions (awaiting reviewers/authors)
• 1 awaiting review 

The papers are excellent! It is going to be a great special issue focusing on children's voices.

Children's Voices Cente - Whole of Centre Meeting - February 2026

Today was the first whole of centre meeting for the Children;s Voices Centre for 2026. It was exciting to welcome affilaites and HDR students to The Treehouse in Bathurst, and online.

We were pleased to welcome:

• CVC staff: Sharynne McLeod, Tamara Cummiong, Kathy Cologon, Carolyn Gregoric
• CVC affiliates: Helen L. Blake, Lucia Wuersch, Brendon Hyndman, Sarah Verdon, Libbey Murray, Joanne Grimmond, Hannah Greig, Jessica Sears, Lindsay Smith, Sabrina Syed, Katrina Gersbach, Sarah Stenson, Kate Margetson, Kate Freire, Cyrena Hunt-Madden, Leena Awawdeh, 
• HDR students: Gotham Roy, Arifa Rahman
• CVC visitors: Wiebke Freese from Lubeck University, Germany 

Topics included: 

1. Welcome to 2026: vision, mission, areas of focus
2. Children’s Voices Centre achievements in 2025: Establishment: Launch, The Treehouse; collaborations
3. Impact: World Health Organization; United Nations Foundation, Grants, publications, presentations
4. Children’s Voices Centre staff, adjuncts, affiliates, higher degree students, visitors, friends, 
5. Recruitment for new Senior Administration Officer: http://internal-jobs.csu.edu.au/ci/en/job/498693/senior-administration-officer 
6. CVC2026 conference: Chairs: A/Prof Kathy Cologon, Prof Sharynne McLeod, A/Prof Tamara Cumming; Secretary: Dr Carolyn Gregoric. Committees
7. CVC research community meeting: Every Thursday 12-1pm; Call for presenters; Competition to make up name; Call for sites in Albury, Dubbo, Orange, Wagga, Port Macquarie etc. 
8. Children Draw Play project
9. World Health Organization project: scoping review and children’s perspectives of health research
10. Website: Suggestions for updates and refining research areas
11. Notification of meeting to set CVC Workforce research agenda
12. Call for Newsletter Edition 2
13. CVC whole of centre meeting: bimonthly, first Thursday of month starting February 5
14. The Treehouse: Drop in and say hello on Wednesdays 12-1pm

 

Happy Sami day (6 February) and Camilla's report about her visit to CSU

Camilla Porsanger was a visiting PhD scholar at the Children's Voices Centre in 2025. Here is her report published by Nord University that has been published for Sami day 2026:

https://www.uv.uio.no/spedaims/aktuelt/aktuelle-saker/2026/urfolk-sprak-og-rettigheter.html

It begins: 

"– I år føles Samefolkets dag ekstra spesiell
Et forskningsopphold på den andre siden av kloden har gitt stipendiat Camilla Porsanger et tydeligere blikk på språk, identitet og rettigheter. – Å være på steder med så dyp kulturell og åndelig betydning for aboriginske urfolk gjorde sterkt inntrykk."

Translation

"– This year, Sami Day feels extra special
A research stay on the other side of the globe has given fellow Camilla Porsanger a clearer look at language, identity and rights. – Being in places with such deep cultural and spiritual significance for Aboriginal indigenous peoples made a strong impression."

Here are some photos from Camilla on Sami Day above the Arctic Circle in Norway

Catch up with Prof Yvonne Wren

 There are so many projects and areas of overlap with Prof Yvonne Wren from University of Bristol and Cardiff that we needed a 2026 catchup tonight. Topics included

• The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (Yvonne co-authored the English English chapter and the Welsh chapter - and has colleagues who may be able to write chapters in the next edition of the book) 
• Two papers with Amy Davis about using the Intelligibility in Context Scale with the Cleft Collective Cohort
• MISLToe studies - now there are 3 manuals for replications in other countries and with other populations to consider: core outcomes, list of definitions, and diagnostic protocols.
• AMS grant with our colleagues from Brazil 

 

Children's Voices Conference (CVC2026)

Our Children's Voices Conference (CVC2026) launch page is live today. Thanks to Patrick McKenzie https://childrensvoicesconference.csu.domains/

Welcome Wiebke Freese, visiting CVC from Germany

Welcome to Wiebke Freese who is a PhD student at the University of Lubeck (Universität zu Lübeck), Germany who is visiting the Children's Voices Centre and The Treehouse on the Bathurst campus of Charles Sturt University. It is a joy to host her. 

Wiebke's supervisor is Prof Annette Fox-Boyer - a long-term colleague who has taught me a lot about German children's speech. Interestingly, Dr Sarah Masso, my previous PhD student undertook her postdoctoral scholarship with Annette a few years ago. Last time I saw Wiebke and Annette was at the ICPLA conference in Patras Greece.

 

A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Wiebke Freese and Prof Sharynne McLeod at the Children's Voices Centre

 

Weibke has been welcomed by CSU kangaroos, beautiful skies, and friendly colleagues.

Welcome Wiebke

Kangaroos on CSU's Bathurst campus

Sunset on Wiebke's first night in Bathurst

Bathurst's Machattie Park

Wiebke in The Beehive

Wiebke's bee-inspired gifts for The Treehouse

PhDs containing publications - Copyright resources from the CSU Library and Research Office

Thanks to Sarah Bartlett and Holly McAlister who organised a meeting to discuss PhDs containing publications with the Research Office and Library. Here are some resources that were shared.

Copyright for HDR students - https://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/for-research/hdr-students

Requesting permission to use copyright material - https://libguides.csu.edu.au/copyright-permission/requesting 

Open Access Licences  https://opentext.csu.edu.au/oalicences/
by Jane Bowland and Lyndall Holstein

Book Description:This OER is a practical guide for Charles Sturt University staff, researchers, and students. It covers how to reuse openly licensed works in study, teaching, and research; the meaning of Creative Commons licences and how to apply them when publishing theses, research outputs, and open education resources (OER). 

Figure permissions:

• CCC - https://marketplace.copyright.com/rs-ui-web/mp
• PLS - https://www.plsclear.com/Home/Index

 

LSHSS special issue on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

The first article has been published that will form a part of our special issue "Children's Communication and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child". Congratulations to the team from Belgium.

Alighieri, C., Bettens, K., & Lierde, K. V. (2026, in press). Speaking up: Communication rights and the lived experiences of children with cleft palate. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-25-00131 
 

Abstract
Purpose:
A cleft palate is a congenital condition characterized by an opening in the roof of the mouth that can affect speech, feeding, hearing, dentition, aesthetics, and social integration. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of six children with cleft palate in relation to their communication rights as articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), specifically CRC Article 12 (respect for children's views), Article 13 (sharing thoughts freely), and Article 23 (children with disabilities).
Method:
Through semistructured interviews and participatory methods, six children with a cleft palate (aged 6–13 years) shared their perspectives on how speech-language therapy influences their ability to express themselves, engage socially, and participate in educational and family life. A hybrid thematic analysis approach was adopted, combining both inductive and deductive strategies.
Results:
The analyses of the data derived directly from the children revealed three overarching themes in relation to CRC Article 12 (respect for children's views), Article 13 (sharing thoughts freely), and Article 23 (children with disabilities): Theme 1: Voice, Agency, and Participation in Decisions; Theme 2: Freedom of Expression and Emotional Safety; and Theme 3: Awareness of Difference and Need for Support. These themes reflect a nuanced interplay between children's personal experiences and the realization of their communication rights in therapeutic contexts. Findings reveal both empowering aspects of intervention, enhancing confidence and social inclusion, and barriers including limited access to tailored services and communication challenges that hinder full expression.
Conclusions:
The study underscores the critical role of speech interventions in upholding children's communication rights and advocates for inclusive, child-centered approaches that prioritize children's voices and diverse communication needs. Implications for clinicians, educators, and policymakers highlight the need to address systemic inequities and foster environments where children with cleft palate can fully exercise their rights to be heard and freely express themselves.

RHRI and CVC membership and affiliate structures

Today Dr Carolyn Gregoric and I met with Prof Julian Grant and Wahid from the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) to discuss collaborations, membership and affiliate structures across the Children's Voices Centre (CVC) and RHRI. We have a long history of working together so it was a productive meeting.

 

Tasmanian speech study - data analysis and preparation for 2026 data collection

This week I have spent a lot of time on our Tasmanian speech study (CeTasSSD). I have undertaken data analysis with Dr Nicola Ivory - which involved more data cleaning therefore beginning all of the analyses again (a very typical scenario in quantitative data analysis). I have hired a new research assistant, Emma Scanlon and worked on finalising the International Speech Screen with Helen Blake.

Emma Scanlon

Nicola Ivory

 

Children Draw Playing - Journal article team leaders' meeting

 

Carolyn, Medhi, Belinda, Brendon and Sharynne 

Today was the first meeting for 2026 of the lead authors to write up our Children Draw Playing dataset and the journal article leads outlined their aims, data sets, team members and target journals and conferences. Thanks to Dr Carolyn Gregoric for preparing the data set and leading ~20 CVC members to analyse the data in 2025. Here are some of the proposed papers. The first one is almost ready to submit :)

1. Children draw playing around the world: Carolyn Gregoric and Sharynne McLeod (leads) with 20 CVC affiliates as co-authors
2. Children draw playing in Mongolia: Carolyn Gregoric (lead)
3. Talking during play: Sharynne McLeod (lead)
4. Concepts of play: Belinda Downey (lead)
5. Why is drawing good for the world: Belinda Downey (lead)
6. Drawing movement: How children depict and describe active play: Brendon Hyndman (lead) 
7. PEO analysis: Mehdi Rassafiani (lead)  
8. Cultural historical activity theory: Shukla Sikder (lead)   

Children Draw Play reliability analysis

Thanks to Azizur Rahman who has worked closely with Carolyn Gregoric to undertake the analyses to determine the reliability of our Children Draw Playing data. We met on a very hot day (42oC in some cities) to discuss and write up the Cohen's kappa analyses.

 

Farewell Lorraine

We are very sad to farewell Lorraine Bennett who has been the inaugural Senior Administration Officer for the Children's Voices Centre. She has been an amazing support as we have established the Centre and The Treehouse. We wish her well and will miss her very much. Thank you Lorraine.

 

Kathy Cologon, Carolyn Gregoric, Tamara Cumming, Lorraine Bennett

Tamara, Sharynne and Lorraine

Thank you Lorraine

Lorraine gave me permission to include her "heartfelt words" in my blog:

Subject: A Fond Farewell from Lorraine

Hello CVC Team,
As I sign off today for the final time as Senior Administration Officer with the Children’s Voices Centre, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

It has been an absolute privilege to be part of the CVC journey and to work alongside such passionate, thoughtful, and committed people. Being involved in a centre so deeply focused on research “with, for and about children”  — and ensuring that children’s voices are gen  heard, valued, and respected — has been incredibly meaningful to me.

I am so proud of what has been built: from the vision and values that guide the Centre, to the people who bring it to life every day, and the spaces (especially the Treehouse) that welcome children, families, researchers, and community. Watching CVC grow and flourish during 2025 has been such a wonderful experience.

I look forward  to following  your achievements and successes into the future, and will welcome any invitation to share in your successes and homecoming soup celebrations.

Always grateful for this experience 😊

Lorraine Bennett