CVC2026 update

Overview: Conference to be held 1-3 September 2026

• 666 registrants across 40+ countries
• 174 abstracts from 36 countries
• 114 papers with 2+ reviews completed (9 no reviews + 51 one review)
• 4 keynotes accepted

Registrations = 666
Countries: (40) Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam

Abstract submissions = 174
Countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Fiji, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, VietNam

CVC2026 Committees
Scientific review committee (Chair: Associate Professor Tamara Cumming)
Committee membership: Dr Helen L. Blake; Sarah Bartlett; Associate Professor Kathy Cologon; Associate Professor Kate Crowe; Dr Jessamy Davies; Dr Lysa Dealtry; Dr Belinda Downey; Dr Kate Freire; Katrina Gersbach; Dr Leanne Gibbs; Dr Carolyn Gregoric; Hannah Greig; Dr Jo Grimmond; Mrs Kasey Hillyar; Dr Laura Hoffman; Dr Suzanne C. Hopf; Cyrena Hunt-Madden; Alam Hossain; Associate Professor Brendon Hyndman; Dr Marie Ireland; Janine Krecko; Dr Kate Margetson; Professor Jillian Marsh; Holly McAlister; Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod; Arifa Rahman; Associate Professor Mehdi Rassafiani, Dr Goutam Roy; Dr Shukla Sikder; Dr Lindsay Smith; Sarah Stenson; Associate Professor Sarah Verdon, Dr Lucia Wuersch

Children's voices committee (Chair: Associate Professor Kathy Cologon)
Committee membership: Associate Professor Kate Crowe; Dr Kate Freire; Katrina Gersbach; Kasey Hillyar; Dr Marie Ireland; Janine Krecko; Holly McAlister; Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod; Arifa Rahman; Dr Lindsay Smith; Sarah Stenson

Organisation committee (Chair: Dr Carolyn Gregoric)
Committee membership: Associate Professor Kathy Cologon; Associate Professor Kate Crowe; Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod; Sarah Stenson

Participant network and fun committee (Co-chairs Ms Sarah Bartlett and Dr Jo Grimmond)
Committee membership: Dr Lysa Dealtry; Dr Carolyn Gregoric; Alam Hossain; Dr Shukla Sikder

Professional recognition committee (Chair: Professor Sarah Verdon)
Committee membership: Dr Carolyn Gregoric; Kasey Hillyar; Janine Krecko; Holly McAlister; Arifa Rahman

Promotion/social media committee (Chair Associate Professor Kathy Cologon)
Committee membership: Associate Professor Kathy Cologon; Dr Marie Ireland; Janine Krecko; Dr Kate Margetson; Arifa Rahman

Publications committee (Chair: Associate Professor Tamara Cumming)
Committee membership: Associate Professor Kathy Cologon; Dr Leanne Gibbs; Dr Suzanne C. Hopf; Mr Alam Hossain; Associate Professor Brendon Hyndman; Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod; Arifa Rahman; Dr Goutam Roy; Dr Shukla Sikder; Associate Professor Sarah Verdon

Arifa Rahman on the Scientific Review Committee reviewing abstracts in EasyChair

A new kitchen for The Treehouse

For over two years we have been working towards having a new safe kitchen in The Treehouse for the Children's Voices Centre. We are getting very close to realising our goal. The plans are in - and the builders are ready. Thanks to the philanthropist who donated the funds for this to occur.

CVC and World Health Organization collaboration

Our CVC team met this morning to update our progress on the CVC and WHO collaborative projects exploring children's perspectives of health. Most projects have completed the data collection phase and are currently being written up. There will be a lot of publications submitted in the next half of the year.

Tamara, Sharynne, Belinda, Kathy, Carolyn, Helen, Kate F

Publication impact

Kate Crowe and wrote two papers summarizing children's speech acquisition. Recently we learned that they are two of the three papers that are the most downloaded of any papers published in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association journals. WOW!

• Children's English Consonant Acquisition in the United States: A Review, authored by Kathryn Crowe and Sharynne McLeod and published in AJSLP in November 2020 currently has 298, 831 downloads.  At the current rate it will pass 300,000 downloads sometime this month.
• Children's Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review, authored by Sharynne McLeod and Kathryn Crowe and published in the November 2018 edition of AJSLP is currently at 205,471 downloads. 

Orðaheimurinn Team Meeting

This morning was the first Orðaheimurinn (OH+) Team Meeting (World of Words).

Grant title: Optimisation of the World of Words (Orðaheimurinn batnandi fer) 

Here is the abstract: Many children from homes where Icelandic is not spoken, or not the only language spoken, experience challenges communicating effectively in Icelandic during their preschool years and beyond. This can be due to these children having insufficient access to high quality Icelandic language models in their daily lives. Difficulties with Icelandic in the preschool years can have long-term negative consequences for children’s language, literacy, academic, social, emotional, psychological, and vocational outcomes. This project is an extension of a cluster randomized controlled trial conducted in 2022-2024 and will test an optimised version of the Orðaheimurinn [World of Words] intervention, called Orðaheimurinn+ (OH+). OH+ is a teacher-delivered shared-reading intervention and education program for increasing the Icelandic language skills of children in preschool, especially children who are multilingual. This project uses a Translational Research Framework within a Community-Based Participatory Research approach to maximise the social validity of OH+ and ensure that an intervention is developed that can be widely used by preschools across Iceland. 

The project is based on World of Words: /https://www.worldofwordswow.com/

The following people are researchers involved in the project and were present:

• Kate Crowe - University of Iceland
• Þóra Másdóttir - University of Iceland
• Jóhanna T. Einarsdóttir - University of Iceland
• Susan B. Neumann - New York University, USA
• Mark Guiberson - University of Wyoming, USA
• Sharynne McLeod, Charles Sturt University, Australia 
• Frederic Borries - USA

We received a grant from the Icelandic Research Fund to undertake this work (17% success rate)  

Susan introduced us to this paper: 

Weiss, C. H. (1995). Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. In J. Connell, A. C. Kubisch, L. B. Schorr, & C. H. Weiss (Eds.), New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts (pp. 65-92). Aspen Institute. https://docs.opendeved.net/lib/2URBNM2X

 

Intelligibility in 3- and 5-year-olds born with cleft lip and/or palate: Reference data on Intelligibility in Context Scale scores

The following paper has just been published. It was commenced during my Benjamin Meaker Visiting Distinguished Professorship at the University of Bristol.

Davies, A., McLeod, S. & Wren, Y. (2026). Intelligibility in 3- and 5-year-olds born with cleft lip and/or palate: Reference data on Intelligibility in Context Scale scores. The Cleft Palate Craniofacial Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/10556656261456526

Here is the abstract:

Objective
(a) Provide reference data for the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) for children born with cleft lip and/or palate and (b) compare ICS scores: between cleft types; with typically developing and normative samples; and across ages 3- and 5-year-old children.
Design
Longitudinal prospective cohort study.
Setting
Questionnaire data from the Cleft Collective.
Participants
Three-year-old (n = 928) and 5-year-old children (n = 795) born with cleft lip and/or palate.
Main Outcome Measure(s)
ICS – parent-reported measure using a 5-point Likert scale to indicate how intelligible their child is with seven different communication partners.
Results
Median scores for children born with cleft lip only were higher (4.14, 95% CI = 4.00–4.14 for 3-year-olds; 5.00, 95% CI = 4.29–5.00 for 5-year-olds) than those born with any form of cleft palate (3.71, 95% CI = 3.57–3.86 for 3-year-olds; 4.14, 95% CI = 4.14–4.29 for 5-year-olds). Scores for children born with cleft lip only aligned with studies comprising typically developing children and normative samples, whereas those born with any form of cleft palate did not. Children born with cleft palate and a diagnosed syndrome scored lower than those born with non-syndromic cleft palate. For children who had data at both ages, 75.4% showed improvement over time, 14.3% stayed the same and 10.3% scored lower at age 5.
Conclusion
Reference data are now available for children with the major cleft subtypes which can be used for comparison in clinical settings. These data show how children born with cleft compare with the non-cleft population and change over time.

Congratulations Holly

Congratulations to Holly McAlister who has had these papers published for her PhD while I have been on leave:

McAlister, H., McLeod, S., & Hopf, S. C. (2026). Ladders, trees and matrixes: Child-focused participatory action research frameworks for children with diverse communication abilities. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177/02656590261455298 

McAlister, H., Hopf, S. C., & McLeod, S. (2026). Mountain garden views: Speech-language pathologists’ beliefs, practices and aspirations for culturally responsive practice with Pacific Islander children and families. Speech, Language and Hearing, 29(1), 2671099. https://doi.org/10.1080/2050571X.2026.2671099
 

CeTasSSD catchup

While I was away the CeTasSSD team finalised the data collection. There are 1207 students in kindergarten across the state and were were able to assess 880 students. Most of the students we were unable to assess did not have consent forms returned. We are very pleased with this number. We are now analysing the data so that we can create a bespoke speech screening pathway for the state.

Felicity, Sharynne  and Lisa

The latest registrations for CVC2026

The latest registrations for CVC2026 are: 548 registrants across 40 countries. Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam. 

We have received 174 abstracts from 36 countries. Our scientific review committee is currently reviewing the papers so that only high quality papers are accepted for presentation at the conference. 

Welcome back to CVC

Today was my first day back at work (yesterday was a public holiday). My Children's Voices Centre team has been fantastic. They have been so productive while I have been away. Thank you to A/Prof Kathy Cologon who was the acting director of CVC while I was away and Dr Helen Blake who answered many of my research emails. I also had a kangaroo hop across the lawn outside of my office and some gorgeous birds come to say hello. It is nice to be back.

CVC children's advisory group present at the WHO Disability Health Equity Network side event at COSP19

This week the Children's Voices Centre Children's Advisory group are presenting at the United Nations in New York! They have prepared a 7 minute video to be played during the official United Nations side event. Kathy Cologon has worked with nine children associated with CVC to prepare the video. Wow!

The CVC Children's Advisory Group who presented were: Finbar, Zac, Chloe, Knox, Jocelyn, Greta, Nayantara, Biju facilitated by A/Prof Kathy Cologon, Dr Belinda Downey, Dr Shukla Sikder, and Dr Goutam Roy

Here are the details: 

World Health Organization (WHO) Disability Health Equity Network (DHEN) Side Event at the 19th Conference of States Parties (COSP19) to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability in New York City

Title: Rights to Results: Political Prioritization of Disability Health Equity 20 Years After the CRPD
Time: Wednesday, June 10 ∙ 11:30 am  - 12:45 pm EDT
Location: Bahá'í International Community, 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 120, New York, NY 10017
Co-sponsors:
•    WHO Disability Health Equity Network (DHEN)
•    International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC)
•    Deaf Child Worldwide
•    International Cerebral Palsy Society (ICPS)
•    Rehabilitation International (RI)

Here is the run sheet for the UN side event

11:30 – 11:35    Opening        Christoph Gutenbrunner
11:35 – 11:45    Welcome Addresses       
•    Rehabilitation International President: Christoph Gutenbrunner
•    WHO: Kaloyan Kamenov 
•    Deaf Child Worldwide and IDDC: Elizabeth Sidell
•    ICPS: John Coughlan 
11:45 – 11:50    Introduction of the speakers    Christoph Gutenbrunner    
•    Janet Charchuk, Board Member of Down Syndrome International
•    Rafael Bonfin, Co-founder of Noussa Casa Institute (International Cerebral Palsy Society)
•    Dr. Latoya Dixon, Post-Doctoral Student/Lamar University, Disability Advocate & Critic of the ADA
•    Danielle Engel, Programme Specialist, SRHR Across Life Course, UNFPA
11:50 – 11:57    Video Children’s Voices Centre Advisory Group of Charles Sturt University, Australia
11:57-12:07    Panelist statements
12:07 – 12:32    Panel discussion
12:32 – 12:42    Open discussion with the audience
12:42 – 12:45     Wrap up and closure

 

Universities

While I was on leave I had the opportunity to visit the campuses of a few universities around the world. I did not visit in an official capacity - so had a lovely time just exploring the campuses of ancient and modern universities in cities including:

• Fes and Marrakesh in Morocco 
• Coimbra, Aveiro and Braga in Portugal

I particularly enjoyed the tour of the UNESCO heritage listed university in Coimbra and chatting to the students about the customs and traditions. 

Chatting with students at the University of Coimbra about traditions when students transitioned from first to second year