Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)

Today Dr Kate Margetson and I presented a 2-hour invited seminar titled "Help! How can I support multilingual children? Speech assessment of children’s home language(s) (SACHL)" at the Central West Speechies' PD Day in Orange.

Karen Trengove (Learn2Communicate), Dr Kate Margetson (CSU), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Dr Rebecca Sutherland (The University of Sydney)

Dr Kate Margetson describing data from our research

Dr Kate Margetson describing the SACHL

 

This presentation was a really important day for Kate's postdoctoral research. We have had a 18month grant from the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) to consider how speech pathologists can support multilingual children, particularly in rural areas. Kate presented our work on the SACHL:

https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl

The attendees both provided a wonderful audience for research translation, but also for providing advice about how to make the SACHL better for all.

Congratulations Sarah B

Congratulations Sarah Bartlett on passing your PhD endorsement requirements. It is exciting that you are able to finalise your ethics application then start data collection. Sarah's PhD title is: "Implications of Caregiver-implemented Intervention for Underserved Communities".

Sarah celebrating with her supervisors - Sharynne  and Carolyn Gregoric

 

Tasmanian research planning

It is such a pleasure to collaborate with the team from Catholic Education Tasmania. They are rigorous, responsive, and care for the children in Tasmania. We are planning for our research this year - and are getting closer to finalising the procedures and protocols.

Discussing research with colleagues in northern Norway

 A/Prof Kate Crowe and I have been discussing future research collaborations with colleagues from Nord University for some time on the topic of "Sámi Education Language Assessment Guidelines". We met again for further productive discussions.

Future collaborations

This morning I met with my wonderful colleague from the US - Professor Lynn Williams - to discuss future collaborations. Lynn and I have a rich past of very productive and impactful collaborations. It is exciting to now discuss new areas of work. 

 Here are some of the things we have published together: 

• Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., & McCauley, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). Interventions for speech sound disorders in children. Paul H. Brookes Publishing. 
• Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., & McCauley, R. J. (Eds.). (2021). Interventions for speech sound disorders in children (2nd ed.). Paul H. Brookes Publishing. 
• Baker, E., McCauley, R. J., Williams, A. L., & McLeod, S. (2020). Elements in phonological intervention: A comparison of three approaches using the Phonological Intervention Taxonomy. In E. Babatsouli & M. J. Ball (Eds.), On under-reported monolingual child phonology (pp. 375-399). Multilingual Matters. http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?isb=9781788928946 
• Baker, E., Williams, A. L., McLeod, S., & McCauley, R. (2018). Elements of phonological interventions for children with speech sound disorders: The development of a taxonomy. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(3), 906–935. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0127 

Collaboration with the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG)

 Today A/Prof Tamara Cumming and I met with Lilium Burrow from the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) about a potential collaboration with our World Health Organization project to consider children's perspectives and experiences of health and access to healthcare.

Sharynne, Tamara and Lilium

Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of New South Wales

It has been an honour to serve on the Fellows and Members Assessment Committee of the Royal Society of New South Wales for 2023 and 2024. The Royal Society of NSW is the oldest learned institution in the Southern Hemisphere. Today was my last meeting on the committee before the 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM). I have enjoyed the meetings with the committee members:

• Committee Members: Professor Sean Brawley (FMAC Chair), Trevor Danos AM (FMAC Secretary), Pamela Griffith OAM, Professor Sharynne McLeod, Professor George Paxinos AO, Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver AM, Professor Peter Shergold AC, Professor Ian H Sloan AO, Professor Donald Hector AM
  
• Ex Officio Committee Members: RSNSW President, RSNSW Secretary 

The minutes of the meeting stated "Today is Professor Sharynne McLeod’s final meeting. Professor Sharynne McLeod was thanked for her strong contributions on the Committee."

BOOK - Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd edition)

We are delighted that we have received 17 chapters for our new book: Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd edition) to be published by Multilingul Matters. I'm excited to begin reviewing the chapters with my co-editors Helen Blake, Kate Margetson and Brian Goldstein.

Catholic Education Tasmania - preparing the online forms

Today the Catholic Education Tasmania team met with Sarah Verdon and myself to discuss the forms and processes involved in rolling out the project across Tasmania.

Tonight I met with Kate Crowe to work on the Qualtrics and other data entry processes. 

We are getting ready for when the ethics committee gives us approval to start.

WHO preparation meeting with CSU team

Today our CSU team met for the first time to prepare our WHO research project. What a great team. 

Here is the aim of our 2-year project

To advance health equity for persons with disabilities by understanding the experience and perspectives of children with disabilities in the health sector

Lisa Dealtry, Tamara Cumming, Sharynne McLeod, Carolyn Gregoric, Helen Blake, Kate Freir, Sarah Verdon (+ Suzanne Hopf and Julian Grant)

Meeting 3 with Australian advisors about our new research project with the World Health Organization

Today 17 enthusiastic children (and 8 parents) were our third group of Australian advisors about our new research project with the World Health Organization. They built on the knowledge from our first two meetings and taught us a lot. We are now ready to share their insights with the CSU researchers and the WHO. Thanks children (and parents)!

CSU children's advisory group

Sunflowers = moments of joy in rural Australia

What a joyful day!

2025 research students

 I really love working with my research students. In 2025 I have

• Holly McAlister (co-supervised with Suzanne Hopf)
  
• Sarah Bartlett (co-supervised with Carolyn Gregoric)
• Cathie Matthews (co-supervised with Julian Grant and Libbey Murray)

and a new PhD student who is currently being finalised.

I am also working with Dr Kate Margetson as my postdoc (2 days/week)

They all do such great work - it is a pleasure to work with them all.

Holly, Sharynne and Suzanne

Carolyn, Sharynne and Sarah B

Meeting 2 with Australian advisors about our new research project with the World Health Organization

This weekend I met with seven wonderful children and their adult family members to brainstorm about our new research project with the World Health Organization. Below I have included some of their ideas about "What makes me healthy?" Thanks for your amazing insights everyone!

SACHL 2025

Dr Kate Margetson and I have a grant through the Rural Health Research Institute to develop the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Languages (SACHL, Margetson & McLeod, 2025) https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl and to ensure it is relevant to all speech pathologists including in rural and remote settings.

This morning we

• reflected on our presentation at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (Nov 2024)
• prepared our presentation for the (rural) Central West Speech Pathologists (7 Feb 2025)
• worked on our chapter for a book to be published in Italian
• looked at speech assessments in languages other than English (including the HKCAT that just arrived by mail from Prof Carol To in Hong Kong).

We have already been productive in our first week back from holidays!

 

Authorship contributions

Naming authors on research papers and presentations ensures that appropriate people get credit and are accountable for the reported research. 

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations comprise four criteria, all of which are required to claim authorship:

1. "Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved..." (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)

The CRediT Taxonomy  provides the opportunity to describe each person’s specific contribution to the scholarly output. The 14 roles listed in the CRediT Taxonomy are: "Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing"

Catholic Education Tasmania - Prevalence and screening pathway project

This week A/Prof Sarah Verdon, Dr Nicola Ivory, A/Prof Kate Crowe and I are working on the ethics, and finalisation of the Catholic Education Tasmania - Prevalence and screening pathway project. It is a privilege to work on this to set up a robust screening pathway for Tasmania.

Monday - Sarah, Nicola and Sharynne at CSU

Monday evening-Kate C (in Iceland) and Sharynne

Tuesday - Sarah, Nicola and Sharynne at CSU

Tuesday afternoon - Lisa, Felicity at CET, Sharynne, Sarah, Nicola at CSU

Thursday afternoon - Felicity, Lisa, Sharyne, Nicola, Udari

Director of the Children's Voices Centre

Today was my first day back at work after the summer holidays. It is so exciting to officially begin my role as the Director of the Children's Voices Centre. I am so excited about including children in all we do and to undertaking research with children, for children and about children.

I'm excited to be working with 

• Associate Professor Tamara Cumming, Associate Director Workforce and Policy
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Research Manager

and look forward to employing two new staff very soon.

Initial conversations with Bathurst Regional Art Gallery re Children Draw Health

Today I met with with Lilium Burrow, Audience Engagement Officer, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery to discuss the Children's Voices Centre's new research with the World Health Organization to listen to children about health, health equity and health access. She was enthusiastic about collaborating - and identified these connections: 

• Digital Platforms – including the forecourt projection: https://bathurstart.com.au/artist-opportunities/digital-platform-proposal-call-out/
• Home: Aboriginal art from New South Wales Regional education program https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/home/home-program/ "The Home program is a partnership between Wiradjuri community at Wagga Wagga, The Arts Unit, NSW Department of Education, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW, and connects schools to local Aboriginal artists, community, language and culture."
  
• NSW Young Regional Creators Network (in collaboration with Arts Out West and Cementa Inc.)

A BRAG X Cementa initiative, The NSW Young Regional Creators Network is a network of established and emerging organisations and programs dedicated to delivering creative and social skills and confidence building outcomes for young people in Regional NSW through arts, new technology, and cultural expression.  This program will connect organisations across Central and Western NSW to share resources, ideas, methodologies and talent in a format designed to distribute access across the distances that isolate young people in the regional context. This program directly addresses the difficulty of delivering meaningful cultural outcomes for young people in regional NSW by connecting organisations in a network that will allow resource sharing and program integration that can be delivered to young people across the region. For example, Cementa can supply up to 20 artists a year to conduct workshops, BRAG can provide access to a celebrated regional gallery, artistic program, and professional development, while Arts Out West and Charles Sturt University can provide state of the art facilities for young people that participate in these programs and those of Headspace, Social Futures Clubhouse and BRAG Youth Advocates. This program also offers the potential for youth from across regional NSW to meet and collaborate on common projects and events.

•  Arts Out West

 

 

Meeting with Australian advisors about our new research project with the World Health Organization

This morning I met with Elsie (11), Zach (9) and Chloe (8) who were Australian advisors for the Children Draw Talking Project that now appears on the United Nations (UN) website:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/youth/hr75/submissions/subm-views-youth-led-cso-early-childhood-interdisciplinary-resear.pdf
 
The World Health Organization in Geneva Switzerland saw our submission on the UN website – and want us to do something like this again – but this time about children’s insights into health, being healthy, and accessing healthcare services (hospital, doctor, dentist, nurse, vaccinations, optometry, audiology, speech pathology, physiotherapy, psychology, social work, occupational therapy,  etc.). The WHO especially want to learn about the insights of children who have a disability. 

This morning Zach, Elsie, and Chloe gave me advice about how to approach our new research project with the World Health Organization. They are going to brainstorm with their friends and family about "what makes you healthy". Here are some of their initial ideas: a carrot, exercise, sport, netball, medicine, bikes. We also talked about accessing healthcare. I will chat with them and more of my Australian advisors during January to prepare documentation for WHO in February.

Thanks Chloe, Zach and Elsie!

This work will be part of our new Children’s Voices Centre https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/home

Zach, Chloe and Elsie chatting via Zoom

Elsie, Chloe, Zach, Sharynne

Here are some of the things that Elsie, Zach and Chloe's advice (+ others in their family) have helped us with in the past:

• Children’s Voices Centre: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/home
• The Treehouse: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/the-treehouse
• Early Childhood Voices Conference: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/
• Children Draw Playing: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/children-draw-playing/
• Children Draw Talking: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2022/children-draw-talking-gallery-3-australia/

Here is a page that summarizes lots of our work: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/research/childrens-voices

Caregivers’ insights into supporting their late talkers using a Hanen® parent program

Congratulations to Sarah Bartlett on her published paper from her Graduate Certificate that set the stage for her PhD research

Bartlett, S., & McLeod, S. (2025). Caregivers’ insights into supporting their late talkers using a Hanen® parent program. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2024.2438103

Here is the abstract

Purpose
To explore caregivers’ experiences and engagement during the 16-week Target Word™ Hanen® program for parents designed to support late talkers.

Method
Qualitative interpretative description methodology was used to understand the experience of five caregivers who had completed Target Word™ to support their children (aged 18-36 months). Caregivers attended a focus group to share their perspectives. Transcripts of these focus groups were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Result
Two themes were identified regarding caregiver engagement during Target Word™ intervention. Firstly, caregivers described explicit support roles for speech-language pathologists: (a) Beginning phase (clarify expectations), (b) middle phase (enable caregiver to link changes in their behaviour to positive child outcomes), and (c) final phase (empowered caregivers). Secondly, caregiver engagement is influenced by: (a) Individual needs and expectations, (b) active engagement during key learning moments, and (c) influence of the broader environment.

Conclusion
Each caregiver participating in Target Word™ experienced unique engagement journeys over the course of the program. Speech-language pathologists can explicitly facilitate engagement at each phase of Target Word™ to promote active engagement for learning and ultimately caregiver empowerment to support their children’s language growth.

Listen Up: Autistic Youth Need to Be Heard

Our new Children's Voices Centre is important. Here is a new paper that has just been published in the US journal - Pediatrics. The author cited our communication rights paper (McLeod, 2018). Thank you Jace for speaking up! 

Listen Up: Autistic Youth Need to Be Heard 

Pediatrics Perspectives| December 17 2024
Jace E. Pooley
Address correspondence to: Jace Pooley, c/o Andrew F. Beck, MD, MPH, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Ave, MLC 7035, Cincinnati, OH 45229. jacepooley@icloud.com
Pediatrics (2025) 155 (1): e2024069175.
https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2024-069175

Subjects:Autism/ASD, Developmental/Behavioral Health, Interpersonal & Communication Skills
Topics:autistic disorder

Autistic youth need to be heard. Many have a difficult time speaking and are informally called “nonspeakers.” Too often, nonspeakers like me don’t get to share our thoughts even though we have lots to say. We aren’t broken or puzzles to unravel. We are, however, thoughtful and smart. We may not communicate like others do, but we have voices that deserve to be heard. I’d like to use my voice to share what being a nonspeaker means to me.

I’m a nonspeaker. I can say a few things, but not consistently and not always in the way that I intend. That’s part of the reason that I was diagnosed with autism. I hated that diagnosis until recently, because I felt the label suggested that I wasn’t smart. I have long struggled with the way autism is presented: a disease or problem to be solved. But I see autism as having...

Children's Voices Centre has begun

Welcome to the Children's Voices Centre's new staff members:

• Associate Professor Tamara Cumming, Associate Director Workforce and Policy
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Research Manager

We had a wonderful meeting to plan and dream today.

Part of our 3-year focus is for the world to "include children"and grow capacity at The Treehouse.

Carolyn, Tamara and Sharynne

ECV2024 certificates

The ECV2024 certificates are going out to presenters at the moment. Here is the accompanying email:

Dear Sharynne,

Thank you for presenting at the Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2024). This virtual and asynchronous event brought together 1,338 researchers and professionals from 54 countries.

Over four days, ECV2024 showcased the work of the four keynote presentations, 147 oral presentations, and 200+ children’s drawings across three streams - early childhood voices: international interdisciplinary research, multilingual children's speech development and children draw playing global online gallery. Participants also engaged in six yarning circle discussions and a workshop on understanding different communications methods presented by Shirley Wong, who has lived experience of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices.

The conference website can be viewed here https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2024/

Previous conferences are also available online
· ECV2020 https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2020/
· ECV2022 https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2022/

Thank you for your contribution to ECV2024
See you in 2026.

Dr Kelly Tribolet and Dr Belinda Downey
Early Childhood Voices 2024 Professional Recognition Committee
Charles Sturt University Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group
 
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod and Dr Belinda Downey
Charles Sturt University Early Childhood Voices 2024 Conference Chairs
 
Dr Carolyn Gregoric
Charles Sturt University Early Childhood Voices 2024 Conference Secretary