April 15, 2025

Sustainable Development Goals - Speech Pathology Australia podcast

Today Julie Marshall and I received an email from Nadia Marussinszky, Professional Education Senior Officer and Speak Up Podcast producer at Speech Pathology Australia. She wrote:

"From time to time Speech Pathology Australia will re-broadcast an episode, and to add a different angle to this we ask speech pathologists to select a previous episode to re-run, and then to share a brief, introductory reflection. I wanted to let you know that one of the members of our conference planning committee for 2025 has chosen the episode you recorded about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and recorded a reflection to introduce the episode. We will rebroadcast this in June this year...Once the episode has been re-broadcast we will send over a copy of the social media image SPA are using to promote the episode and link to the episode...

I also thought you might like to know that the episode has been streamed 3,946 times since publication! The information and guidance you shared has reached a lot of people, thank you for sharing it!"

Here are some of the resources that Speech Pathology Australia will share with the podcast: 

Population data - The importance of working with key data managers

Today I was able to meet with "Data Debbie" from Catholic Education Tasmania. She is overseeing our data entry once our project is signed off and ready to officially begin with CET. We discussed the importance of demographic data, understanding missing data, and also the possibility of scanning data into Excel straight from the ICS forms! Thanks Debbie, Lisa and Udari!


 

April 10, 2025

IALP Honoured Member Award

I have just received this welcome news that I will receive the IALP Honoured Member Award from the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP https://ialp-org.com/) – the international association of professionals and scientists in communication, voice, speech language pathology, audiology and swallowing.

IALP fosters professional knowledge and exchange of science and services across 55 affiliated societies in 35 countries around the world. The affiliated societies of the IALP are in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe and represent more than 300,000 members. IALP is a Non-State Actor in Official Relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) https://ialp-org.com/who/.

Over the past 100 years (since 1924 when IALP began) there have only been 22 honoured members and none from Australia or New Zealand (https://ialp-org.com/individual-members/)

  1. Prof. Harm Schutte
  2. Rev. Sr Marie Montfort de Supple
  3. Prof. Dr Nasser Kotby
  4. Prof. Dolores Battle
  5. Prof. Ewa Sonderpalm
  6. Prof. Tanya Gallagher
  7. Prof. Gary Weismer
  8. Prof. Frantisek Sram
  9. Prof. Kyoko Iitaka
  10. Prof. Helen Grech
  11. Prof. Dr Katherine G. Butler
  12. Prof. Bjorn Fritzell
  13. Prof. P. Helbert Damste
  14. Dr. Andre Muller
  15. Prof. Ikuichiro Hiroto
  16. Dr. Walter Eltsner
  17. Prof. Dr. Herman F.M Peters
  18. Dr. Henry C. Jr Jason
  19. Dr. Britta Hammarberg
  20. Prof. Lilly Cheng
  21. Prof. Pamela Enderby
  22. Dr. Fernanda Dreux

The Award will be presented in Malta in August.

Congratulations Dr Jenny Dwyer

Sharynne  and Jenny

Shukla, Alam, Arifa and Jenny

Congratulations to my colleague who has just learned that her PhD has been accepted and that she will graduate as Dr Jenny Dwyer soon. Jenny was a co-editor on our book Early Childhood Voices: Children, Families, Professionals - and I have enjoyed learning about the progress of her PhD over the past few years.

Oceania and Global Indigenous Research Hub Info Session

This morning I attended the first information session for the Oceania and Global Indigenous Research Hub at Charles Sturt University. What a fabulous initiative lead by A/Prof Holly Randall-Moon and Dr Nick Ruddell from the School of Indigenous Australian Studies (SIAS). They are bringing together researchers across CSU focusing on profile raising, HDR global exchange, grant capture/research, and consultancy (policy advice/sector influence). The Hub will be using FOR code 4519 for research.

April 8, 2025

Nord University presentation - Children Draw Talking

This afternoon I presented a paper to Nord University colleagues about our Children Draw Talking Global Online Gallery. Here are the resources I shared: • Early Childhood Voices Global Online Gallery: https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/early-childhood-voices-conference-2022/children-draw-talking-gallery-1-the-world/ • Sound Effects Study Drawing Protocol (McCormack et al., 2022). Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 53(3), 713-731. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00140 • Children’s voices communication rights advocacy with the United Nations https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/youth/hr75/submissions/subm-views-youth-led-cso-early-childhood-interdisciplinary-resear.pdf Books • Mahony, L., McLeod, S., Salamon, A., & Dwyer, J. (Eds.). (2024). Early childhood voices: Children, families, professionals. Springer. • Roulstone, S., & McLeod, S. (Eds.). (2011). Listening to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. J&R Press.

Children's Voices Centre - welcome to new members

We had a wonderful meeting welcoming new affiliates to the Children's Voices Centre (CVC). We now have over 60 people from Charles Sturt University who have joined the CVC and we are adding their names to our website and CRO pages:

What a fabulous interdisciplinary team of researchers have joined the centre. The insights from so many different people, disciplines, cultures, and perspectives will ensure that our research is


Impact - ContinuEd is offering textbook training using our book

We just received the following email from our publishers - Paul H. Brookes.
"ContinuEd, an online continuing education unit (CEU) platform, is planning to offer a Textbook training for Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children, Second Edition on speechpathology.com. Speech-langauge pathology (SLP) subscribers will take a 10-question test on the book and earn American Speech-Lanuage-Hearing Association (ASHA) CEUs if they pass."

April 7, 2025

Visitor to CVC - Lucy Rodgers - Wellcome funded clinical PhD fellowship

This week we have welcomed Lucy Rodgers to the Children's Voices Centre. Lucy's visit is supported by her Wellcome funded clinical PhD fellowship. She is studying her PhD at City St Georges, University of London, UK. Here is her bio

Lucy is a Speech and Language Therapist who has been working in the UK National Health Service for 18 years. In 2021, she was awarded a National Institute of Health Research pre-doctoral clinical academic fellowship. In 2022, she commenced her Wellcome funded ‘health advances in under-represented populations and diseases’ (HARP) clinical PhD fellowship at City St Georges, University of London. In her PhD work, Lucy is developing a novel intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of a SSD and DLD. As well as her subject-specific interests in SSD and DLD, Lucy is passionate about co-design, patient and public involvement (PPI), and supporting healthcare access in under-served groups.

Sharynne  and Lucy standing on Waluu (Mt Panorama) looking over Bathurst
 

Lucy's seminar for the CVC team was titled: Developing a novel, complex intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of speech sound disorder (SSD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). 


A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Prof Sharynne  McLeod, Lucy Rodgers
Here is the abstract

Approximately 40% of 4 year olds with a speech sound disorder (SSD) also have features of a developmental language disorder (DLD) (Eadie et al., 2015). This co-occurring profile is associated with later negative outcomes relating to communication, literacy and quality of life (Lewis et al., 2015; Wren et al., 2016; Hayiou-Thomas et al., 2017). Yet, there are few interventions to date which have been developed to meet the specific needs of this clinical group. The aim is to develop a novel, complex intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of SSD and DLD.
Methods: Methods were informed by the Medical Research Council (MRC) guidance for developing  and evaluating complex interventions (Skivington et al., 2021).
•    Phase 1- systematic review to explore similarities and differences between intervention techniques for SSD/DLD and relate to underlying theory.
•    Phase 2- online survey of current clinical practice (108 UK SLTs).
•    Phase 3- two round e-Delphi with 35 UK based expert SLTs to gain consensus on core intervention elements, based on the findings from phases 1 and 2.
•    Phase 4a- refinements to the intervention in response to feedback from 6 parents from low SES and/or non English speaking backgrounds.
•    Phase 4b (current)- six NHS SLTs reviewing the intervention protocol to optimise operationalisation within clinical services.
A mixed steering group of people with lived experience (an adult with DLD, a parent of a child with SSD/DLD) and professionals (3 speech and language therapists, a bilingual education support worker, a specialist teacher) have overseen all project phases.
Results and conclusions: Following the 4 study phases, we now have a draft intervention protocol which has been mapped on to the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) framework (Hoffmann et al., 2014). We also have a corresponding ‘Theory of Change’, which outlines how different intervention components (relating to linguistic and behaviour change theory, and implementation science) are anticipated to interact with each other. The face validity of the intervention has been strengthened by the involvement of a diverse range of relevant professionals and people with lived experience within the intervention development process. However, further refinements may be made to the intervention in response to initial trialling.
Conclusions & Implications: The results suggest that ECE teachers are moderately accurate in judging children’s language skills, while also showing tendencies for judgment inaccuracies. Furthermore, their assessments alone may not suffice for identifying language delays. Combining multiple sources of information is essential. Future research should report detailed teacher and child characteristics to enhance meta-analytic synthesis.

 

Here is Lucy's acknowledgment of country at the beginning of her presentation

As a British citizen I acknowledge the legacy of UK’s colonial history. I acknowledge that I am a visitor to the land of the Wiradjuri people. We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today. We also pay respect to past, present and emerging elders and extend that respect to other Indigenous people who are present.  I would like to encourage everyone to please share the Nation you are joining from today in the chat.

 

Breakfast Club and books!

We received this email from our research partners

"We posted the following text on our socials with the attached photos."

Breakfast Club and books!  

Our young mob were given the opportunity to read, choose and take books home to read for keeps as a thank you from our CSU Research Project team (who visited Breakfast Club and exchanged opinions on books late last year). Marang Gunya will soon have it's own Little Library for the kids to access every week.





April 3, 2025

Speech pathology screening clinic at OAMS



Today, as part of our RHRI research, Sarah Bartlett, Emily-Jane Woodhead and I (3 speech pathologists) worked alongside Katrina and Tegan from OAMS to run a speech pathology screening clinic for Indigenous families to drop in and yarn about their children's speech, language and communication. We learned a lot and enjoyed yarning with the families and children.

April 2, 2025

Research productivity

What a joy it is to work closely with Dr Helen Blake. We are so productive on so many different aspects of our research. Thank you Helen.

April 1, 2025

SACHL focus group

Thank you so much to the informative and knowledgeable members of our focus group who have provided helpful advice about the development of the SACHL - phase 2 of our implementation science research. They agreed to have their photo take after tonight's session (session 3).


 

March 28, 2025

Rotary eClub of Brindabella

Last night I spoke to members of the Rotary eClub of Brindabella at the invitation of president, Dr Travis Holland. (https://rotarye-clubofbrindabella.org.au/)

 Communication is a human right for ALL:
Let’s ensure we support children’s communication


Communication is a human right for all; including children with speech, language, and communication needs and those who speak/sign non-dominant languages (McLeod, 2018). Aligning with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989) the Charles Sturt University Children’s Voices Centre have given attention to the “voice” of children. We have creatively engaged in child-friendly methods to provide children with the “right to freedom of expression… regardless of frontiers” as outlined in Article 13. We have the power to support children’s voice and to assist others to listen. How can we support children’s participation within democratic processes in their families, schools, communities, and society?

Children’s Voices Centre  - https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/home

March 27, 2025

Just published

van Doornik, A., Welbie, M., McLeod, S., Gerrits, E., & Terband, H. (2025). Speech and language therapists’ insights into severity of speech sound disorders in children for developing the speech sound disorder severity construct. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 60, e70022. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.70022 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1460-6984.70022

Congratulations Anniek!

March 26, 2025

UN Youth forum at CSU

This morning I had the privilege of welcoming the UN Youth forum to Bathurst to speak with high school students across the region. I had the opportunity to engage with the 85 attendees registered from schools across the region, CSU communication and media staff and students, and the following people:

  • Ms Satara Uthayakumaran, Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations 2025
  • Mr Max Spencer-Tighe, Human Resources Director UN Youth
  • Ms Jessica Luu, NSW President UN Youth
  • Mr Benjamin Fry, Deputy Mayor of Bathurst
  • Ms Kate Hook, Independent Candidate for the seat of Calare
  • Ms Julie Cunningham, Labor Candidate for the seat of Calare

March 25, 2025

Review of children's perspectives of health and healthcare

This morning our team met with the CSU librarian Claudio Dionigi to plan our search strategy for our systematic/scoping review for our project invited by the WHO to consider children's perspectives of health and healthcare.

Sharynne  McLeod, Kate Freire, Kate Crowe, Claudio Dionigi, Suzanne Hopf, Cyrena Hunt-Madden

 

March 24, 2025

Preparing for our SACHL shortcourse

Today Kate Margetson and I met with the DLT team to discuss the development of our SACHL shortcourse. Nik Chalkaranje and Adam Lavelle were enthusiastic and helpful. 


Editorial board membership

It is my pleasure to be on the editorial board of the following journals:

  • International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology [Q1]
  • Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics [Q1]
  • Child Language Teaching and Therapy [Q1]
  • Speech, Language and Hearing [Q1]
  • Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech [Q2]
  • Advances in Communication and Swallowing

In 2025 I am co-editing a special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy and have been invited to be co-editor of some special issues in the future.

March 21, 2025

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia - Panel D Fellowship Committee meeting

Today was my first meeting on the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) - Panel D Fellowship Committee meeting. We considered carefully the impressive contributions of the nominees to become Fellows of ASSA. What a privilege to spend time with esteemed colleagues discussing the research of notable Australians.

March 18, 2025

Honorary Doctorate from the University of Patras, Greece

Today I received the following invitation to accept an invitation to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Patras, Greece. What an honour!

We would like to take the opportunity of the ICPLA 2025 conference in Patras to invite you to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Department of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Patras.
Your contributions to the field of Speech and Language Therapy have been truly significant, and we believe this recognition would be a meaningful way to acknowledge your work. It would be an honor for us to welcome you to Patras and celebrate this occasion together. This would also be a great opportunity to highlight the exceptional work being done at our university in the field of Speech and Language Therapy, showcasing the dedication and progress being made within the department.

Here is a link about a previous recipient of this prestigous honour, Prof. Lucia Banci:  https://www.cerm.unifi.it/news/all-news/305-honorary-doctorate-awarded-to-prof-lucia-banci-by-the-university-of-patras

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

Today Helen, Kate and I met to keep working on our book "Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (2nd edition)". We have received 21 chapters - and they are great. The rest are on their way. We are ahead of schedule.



Congratulations Lucia

It has been a privilege to mentor and support Dr Lucia Wursch in the submission of her grant to the Australian Research Council which was submitted yesterday. We had a chance to celebrate at the Vice Chancellor's morning tea this morning. Congratulations Lucia and best wishes for a successful outcome.

March 17, 2025

CSU/ Nord early childhood collaboration

This evening we had another meeting regarding the CSU/ Nord EC collaboration. The great news is that the Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the two universities.
We have three streams of interest relating to early childhood and discussed collapsing the final two groups:

  • Children voices - Coordinator - Elisabeth Bjørnestad (Nord)
  • Online learning for ECE ITE and MEd - Coordinators-Leanne Gibbs (CSU) and Martin Per Samuelsson (Nord)
  • Quality assurance, regulation and qualifications - Coordinator-Kelly Tribolet (CSU)

The breakout group for the Children's Voices group were invited to share the work they are doing. Professor Karl Victor Magne Johansson described their children's voices research undertaken with five different early childhood centres listening to stories children are telling in different settings in order to create drafts for picture books. The picture books are translated into the Sami language. The images for the picture books have been drawn or photographed by the children or have used the children's words to create AI images. What a fascinating project.

March 13, 2025

Children Draw Playing - data analysis team

Meeting 2 with enthusiastic colleagues from the Children's Voices Centre - competently led by Dr Carolyn Gregoric



 

March 12, 2025

CVC finances

This week I have been so pleased to meet with Gil Burmeister and Michael Woolnough who are finance officers at CSU. Michael will be able to provide support for the Children's Voices Centre (CVC) finances. I am grateful for his oversight of our budget.


 

Book chapter accepted

 This morning we learned that the following book chapter has been accepted for publication

Margetson, K., Tran, V. H., Blake, H. L., Verdon, S., Phạm, B., & McLeod, S., (2025, in press March). Speech and language of Vietnamese-English-speaking children and their families. In Y. Holt, K. N. Washington, & E. Babatsouli (Eds.) Linguistic varieties in North America: A primer for speech and language practitioners. Multilingual Matters.

Congratulations team!

March 11, 2025

Planning our speech pathology screening clinic for Indigenous families

This morning our research team met at the Orange Community Health Centre to plan our speech screening days in April that will be part of our research with Indigenous children. What an informative and useful planning session.

Sharynne, Susan Smith, Sarah Bartlett, Katrina, Emily-Jane Woodhead

Accepted - Parent-reported speech and language in early childhood is an early indicator of Indigenous Australian children’s literacy and numeracy outcomes

The following paper has been accepted for publication:

McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., McMahon, C., Wang, C., & Evans, J. R. (2025, in press March 2025). Parent-reported speech and language in early childhood is an early indicator of Indigenous Australian children’s literacy and numeracy outcomes. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.

Here is a short summary:

This longitudinal study of 1,534 Indigenous Australian children demonstrated that parent report of speech and language concern in early childhood is an important early indicator of education outcomes at school. Families are important knowledge holders throughout a child’s trajectory of learning and development.

Here is the abstract

Purpose: To longitudinally investigate parent-reported children’s speech and language in early childhood as an early indicator of Indigenous Australians’ school-age educational outcomes.
Method: Participants were 1,534 children from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) whose parents reported on expressive and receptive speech and language concern (SLC) at 3–5 years using the Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS). A total of 467 children (30.4%) were identified as having SLC, of whom 308 had only expressive SLC, 65 had only receptive SLC, and 81 had both expressive and receptive SLC. Educational outcomes included (a) National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests (grade 3; 8–9 years), (b) teacher-reported literacy and numeracy on the Academic Rating Scale (ARS) (8–9, 9–10 years), (c) research officer-administered Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT)-Reading (6–7, 7–8, 8–9, 9–10 years) and PAT-Maths (8–9, 9–10 years).
Results: After controlling for covariates (child age, sex, having hearing problems, having a disability, speaking an Indigenous language, parent education, family life events, community socio-economic status, and remoteness), SLC was associated with significantly lower scores on all NAPLAN subtests (reading, writing, spelling, grammar, numeracy); teacher-rated ARS: Language and Literacy (9–10 years); and PAT: Reading (6–7 years) and Maths (9–10 years). Sub-group comparisons indicated that children with both expressive and receptive SLC had the poorest outcomes on NAPLAN and ARS subtests.
Conclusion: Parental reporting of Indigenous Australian children’s speech and language concern in early childhood is an important early indicator of education outcomes at school, indicating the importance of families throughout a child’s trajectory of learning and development.


OUAT - publication preparation

Our Once Upon a Time grant data collection is finished - and today we met to continue working on the data analysis, publications and presentations from this important work.
Sharynne, Jane McCormack, Anna Cronin

March 6, 2025

Hooray! Ethics approval

We were very pleased to receive approval from the CSU Human Research Ethics Committee today for our research with Catholic Education Tasmania. Now we can begin. Hooray!

Accepted journal article - Methods of Diagnosing Speech Sound Disorders in Multilingual Children

Our manuscript titled "Methods of Diagnosing Speech Sound Disorders in Multilingual Children" has just been accepted for publication in the "Changemaker" Special Forum for the Q1 journal Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. It came about because our session at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention in 2024 was one of the few that was awarded "changemaker" status - so we were invited to write up our submission. Thanks to Karla and Kate for leading this important paper. Here is the reference and abstract:

Washington, K. N., Crowe, K., McLeod, S., Margetson, K., Bazzocchi, N. B. M., Kokotek, L. E., van der Straten Waillet, P., Másdóttir, T., & Volhardt M. D. S., (2025, in press). Methods of diagnosing speech sound disorders in multilingual children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.

Purpose: Identification of speech sound disorder (SSD) in children who are multilingual is challenging for many speech-language pathologists (SLPs). This may be due to a lack of clinical resources to accurately identify SSD in multilingual children as easily as for monolingual children. The purpose of this paper is to describe features of multilingual speech acquisition, identify evidence-based resources for the differential diagnosis of SSD in speakers of under-studied language paradigms, and to demonstrate how culturally responsive practices can be achieved in different linguistic contexts.
Method: Examples of different approaches used to inform accurate diagnosis of SSD in 2- to 8-year-old multilingual children are described. The approaches used included: (a) considering adult speech models, (b) completing validation studies, and (c) streamlining evidence-informed techniques. These methods were applied across four different language paradigms in countries within the Global North and Global South (e.g., Jamaican Creole-English, Jamaica; Vietnamese-English, Australia; French and additional languages, Belgium; Icelandic-Polish, Iceland). The culturally responsive nature of approaches in each cultural/linguistic setting is highlighted as well as the broader applicability of these approaches.
Results: Findings related to dialect specific features, successful validation of tools to describe functional speech intelligibility and production accuracy, and the utility of different techniques applied in the diagnosis of SSD are outlined.
Conclusions: Culturally responsive methods offer a useful framework for guiding SLPs’ diagnostic practices. However, successful application of these practices is best operationalized at a local level in response to the linguistic, cultural, and geographic context.

March 5, 2025

Editing a new book

Our editorial team met again today to discuss the publishers' response to our submission. We have a good plan.



Indigenous children's books for our little libraries have arrived

It feels like Christmas! Boxes of children's books written by Indigenous authors have arrived. We will cover them, add identification stickers, and prepare them to distribute to the four Little Libraries at the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service. What a wonderful research project.

 



 

The Children’s Voices Centre has begun

Here is the message we have shared with CSU staff and students

Dear CSU Colleagues
The Children’s Voices Centre has begun.
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/home

We invite everyone from CSU who undertakes research with children, for children, and about children to register to be affiliated with the Children’s Voices Centre: https://forms.office.com/r/Rqz427LtUH. CSU staff, HDR students, and CSU adjuncts are welcome to register.

We are very happy to come and talk to your Faculty, School, or group about Children’s Voices. Contact us at CVC@csu.edu.au
 
The Children’s Voices Centre (CVC) is a beacon of innovation and inclusivity, empowering ALL children to communicate, collaborate, and create a better future for themselves and the world. Our research focusses on:
•    Children, families, and communities, and
•    Workforce and policy.
We amplify children’s voices and champion children’s communication, learning, health, and development. We conduct world-leading, transformative interdisciplinary research with global reach emphasising inclusivity, diversity, social justice, equity, capacity building, and innovation.
Our research focusses on the following themes:
•    Children’s voices
•    Children’s health
•    Children’s activities
•    Early childhood education and workforce needs
•    Multilingual children’s speech
•    Children with speech, language, and communication needs
•    [We welcome conversations about new areas of research focus]
We collaborate with:
•    People: children, families, communities, practitioners, professionals.
•    Disciplines: education (early childhood, primary, inclusive education), allied health (speech-language pathology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, social work, paramedicine), nursing, communications, media, data science, and more
•    Organisations: government departments, universities, international and national organisations including the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
•    Settings: homes, early childhood education and care centres, schools, health and disability services, community settings, businesses, civic settings, leisure and recreation settings.
The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child guides our work to ensure children's voices are heard by those responsible for building an inclusive world for everyone.

Here are some of the opportunities in 2025 for capacity building and collaborations available to affiliates of the Children’s Voices Centre

1.    World Health Organization collaboration about children’s perspectives of health and access to healthcare services
2.    Children Draw Playing data analysis
3.    Publication opportunities
•    Special issue: Child Language Teaching and Therapy (Q1)
•    Book: Multilingual Aspects of Children’s Speech Sounds
•    Book: Early Childhood Voices: Children, families, professionals (2nd ed.)
4.    Visiting scholars (e.g., arts-based research with children)
5.    Research workshops
•    Research wellness retreat
•    CVs and track records
•    Grant writing
6.    Regular research presentations
7.    Preparation for Early Childhood Voices Conference 2026 (ECV2026)

Here is a presentation about the work of the Children’s Voices Centre:
CVC-Roadshow.mp4

https://csuprod-my.sharepoint.com/personal/pmckenzie_csu_edu_au/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpmckenzie%5Fcsu%5Fedu%5Fau%2FDocuments%2FShared%2FCVC%2DRoadshow%2Emp4&amp

We welcome you to join the Children’s Voices Centre.


 

An exciting beginning for the Children's Voices Centre

It is week 1 of the academic calendar for Charles Sturt University. Today we had the opportunity to share the vision of the Children's Voices Centre with:

  • Deputy Vice Chancellor Research - Prof Neena
  • Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme members
  • Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Arts and Education (FOAE) - A/Prof Matt Winslade

We also received this email this morning: "I am pleased to say that the occupation and use of Bathurst building 1451 by the Children’s Voices Centre is endorsed by Campus and Space Planning". Hooray - The Treehouse is ours!


Sharynne, Matt Winslade (ADR FOAE), Tamara Cumming

Brandon Schranzer (DFM), Sharynne, Therese King (DFM), Tamara Cumming

February 28, 2025

Welcome to 2025 - Orientation week at CSU

This week was orientation week for new students at Charles Sturt University. Emily-Jane Woodhead and I enjoyed meeting the students, staff, and vendors - including Max and Damien from UN Youth

 
We learned a lot from Max and Damien at UN Youth

SACHL micro-credential/short course

Today Dr Kate Margetson and I met with the CSU  team led by Nik Ichalkaranje to start the process of the development of a micro-credential and short course for the SACHL

https://www.csu.edu.au/division/learning-teaching/microcredentials-and-short-courses

https://www.csu.edu.au/division/learning-teaching/microcredentials-and-short-courses/design-process

Other members of the team who were present were Amanda Marks, Amber Marks, Jessica Wilkinson, and Diarmuid Kelly.

We are excited about this opportunity



February 26, 2025

Congratulations Cathie Matthews

Congratulations Cathie Matthews who submitted her Masters of Philosophy thesis today. Her thesis is titled "Supporting 2-year-olds’ communication : Collaborations between caregivers, early childhood educators, and health professionals in rural Australia". What a huge achievement! Cathie's research was supervised by myself, Julian Grant and Libbey Murray.

Learning about Arts Out West's capacity building - including with people with disabilities

Today Tamara Cumming and I had our first meeting with colleagues at Arts Out West. They have many impressive programs - including many to support people with disabilities. We plan to collaborate as part of our research with the World Health Organization. What a wonderful opportunity to learn from the team and the artists. Here are some of their initiatives:

VIV
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/viv/
https://www.thebeautifulandusefulstudio.com/
 
STRAY
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/dog-puppet/
 
VISUAL ARTS IN HOSPITALS
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/hospital-work-2023/
 
YAGANDA BULABUL
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/yaganda-bulabul-art-project/
 
BREWING BALLADS
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/brewing-ballads/

Sharynne, Kylie Shead, Kate Smith, Steven Cavanagh, Tamara Cumming 
Arts Out West Strategic Plan - https://artsoutwest.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ARTS-OUTWEST-Strategic-Plan-2025-2028.pdf

OAMS Elders Morning Tea to discuss the Little Libraries

Today Emily-Jane Woodhead and I were honoured to meet with the OAMS Elders for a few hours to discuss our Little Libraries project. They were very enthusiastic about the selected books written by Indigenous authors, and rated by 35 OAMS staff during 2024. 

The list of Indigenous children's books is here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/first-nations-resources

They provided many great ideas for using the books with OAMS children and families, as well as within the local schools and community. One wonderful idea was for elders to sit in the waiting rooms where some of the libraries will be housed and read books with children while they are waiting to be seen for medical and dental services. 

We hope to learn more from the OAMS elders in the future. It was such a special day (and thanks for allowing us to use this photo). 

Elders providing feedback about the books (photo included with permission)


Emily-Jane talking about our research

The sites where some of the little libraries will be located





February 21, 2025

International Mother Tongue Day - meeting with colleagues from Cyprus

On International Mother Tongue Day (21 February) I had a productive meeting with colleagues from Cyprus and Australia about their chapter addressing cross-linguistic taxonomies of speech sound disorder that they have submitted for inclusion in our book "Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds".

Maria Vasilopoulou, Sharynne, Kakia Petinou, Kerry Ttofari