We are so pleased to have been funded by the CSU Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) for the project titled "Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs" ($321,832) for 1.5 years.
Of particular importance in rural areas is the consideration of culturally appropriate and equitable care. There are two groups we are supporting in this grant
- CHILDREN: Indigenous, multilingual and multicultural Australian children with speech-language and communication needs.
- PROFESSIONALS: The primarily monolingual monocultural speech-language pathology workforce who support multilingual children across NSW (Nancarrow et al., 2023; Verdon et al., 2014).
Part of this work will be in association with an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation who initiated and invited us to work with them on a component of the project.
AIMS
- To understand the prevalence and service requirements of children from a rural Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and to design a trial to improve access to speech pathology services that best meets their needs
- To equip rural SLPs to work cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, especially in languages they do not speak
Here is our progress to February 2024
1. The staff and students have been appointed and have begun. We met virtually in December 2023 to establish the team:
- Prof Sharynne McLeod - Chief Investigator
- Kate Margetson - Postdoctoral Scholar
- Dr Carolyn Gregoric - Postdoctoral Scholar
- Emily-Jane Woodhead - Research Officer
- Sarah Bartlett - PhD student
- Cathie Matthews - Masters' student (supported by the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme)
2. Ethics applications – Phase 1 has been approved; Phase 2 in progress
3. Work with Dr Hazel Dalton regarding practice population profiles and data
4. Submission of manuscript to Q1 journal addressing Indigenous Australian children with speech, language and communication needs
5. Abstracts accepted for presentation to the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Perth, May 2024.
6. Submission of manuscript to Q1 journal addressing pilot research testing Target Word as a service model
