Tasmanian speech sound disorders prevalence and screening pathway project (CeTasSSD)
Today was our first official CeTasSSD team meeting for 2026 with our new and expanded team. It was great to have almost the whole 2026 team together this morning to remind ourselves of the importance of this project, look at what we achieved in 2025 and plan for 2026.
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Online: Ally Barrett, Emma Scanlon, Sharynne McLeod, Felicity Laurence, Lisa Johnson, Sarah Verdon, Helen Blake
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The Children's Voices Centre (CVC) was launched 1 October 2025. In 2025 CVC staff, affiliates, HDR students and adjuncts produced 242 outputs documented in CRO including 6 books, 9 reports, 3 theses, 15 chapters, 97 journal articles, and 58 conference presentations. In 2025 CVC staff submitted 5 grants, generated $117,000 HERDC income (undertaking research with Worksafe Victoria, Catholic Education Tasmania, Orange Aboriginal Medical Service), and CVC received its first anonymous philanthropic donation of $30,000. Collaborative research with 20+ interdisciplinary affiliates (mostly early career researchers) resulted in Q1 journal articles and conference presentations with more underway.
The World Health Organization has invited CVC to apply to become a collaborating centre in 2026 following a co-operative research program, official membership WHO Disability Health Equity Network, and presentations at WHO (Geneva, Fiji). CVC research impact includes with United Nations Foundation (USA), Australian Government (Thriving Kids Inquiry, Disability Discrimination Act), Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (3-month exhibition). Leadership roles in International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) and European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA). Awards from Patras University (Greece), International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP, non-state actor of WHO). One CVC HDR student graduated as a CSU university medallist. Visiting scholars were from: Nord University (Norway), Wellcome Trust visiting scholar (UK), East Tennessee State University (USA).
- Books 6
- Reports 9
- Theses 3
- Chapters 15
- Journal articles 97
- Commentary 3
- Editorial 7
- Book/Film/Article review 2
- Contribution to specialist publication 15
- Conference presentation/poster 58
- Resources/Non-textual outputs 27
- TOTAL 242
Today I was the CVC Community Research presenter at our weekly Thursday lunch session.
Multilingual Minds are Unlocking Global Knowledge, γνώση, 认识, إدراك, דַעַת, ज्ञान …
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod Children’s Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University
There are over 7,000 languages in the world. Literature about children’s communication development focusses on English, northern hemisphere Indo-European languages (Draper et al., 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022), and “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies” (Henrich et al., 2010). This presentation will commend the work of multilingual minds (researchers, professionals, and translators) who provide English-language access to global knowledge about speech, language, and communication. It will outline the decade of work of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and knowledge contained within two global initiatives
The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-speech-development-in-languages-of-the-world-9780192868862)
Multilingual Children’s Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/speech-acq-studies)
The presentation will conclude by challenging our reliance on English as the medium for knowledge dissemination and acknowledging the future potential of our connected multilingual world for greater understandings of speech, language, and communication.
Sharynne McLeod, PhD is a Distinguished Professor at Charles Sturt University, Australia specialising in multilingual children’s speech and language acquisition. She has a legacy of leading interdisciplinary teams, building world-class research capacity to undertake impactful international research. Her transformative research has reframed the speech-language pathology profession by foregrounding communication rights and social justice. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has awarded her Honors and the Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contributions in International Achievement. She is a Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and served as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. The Australian Newspaper describes her as Australia’s Research Field Leader and Best in the World in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology based on the “quality, volume and impact” of her research.
Today the Children's Voices Centre staff worked with the CSU Office of Strategy to develop our operational plan. Thanks to Marion Ware and Tiffany Thornton for leading the conversations.
It was an honour to host a visit from the CSU School of Indigenous Australian Studies (SIAS) at The Treehouse yesterday. In 2025 we co-hosted Sami PhD student Camilla Porsanger from Nord University. We look forward to continued collaborations and connections.
The little things in life can drastically increase productivity and reduce expense. It has taken many many months - but this week the Children's Voices Centre has a printer/scanner. Hooray! No more walking to another building to find that the printer didn't connect - and no more paying hundreds of dollars for printing of our newsletters.
It was lovely to welcome my PhD student Holly McAlister and her dog Merlin to The Treehouse (CSU Bathurst) this week. While visiting, she and Wiebke Freese (visiting PhD scholar from University of Lubeck, Germany) spent time together looking through some of the speech tests I have gathered from across the globe).
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| Sharynne McLeod, Holly McAlister, Wiebke Freese, Shukla Sikder |
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).
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.
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| 20 CVC staff and affiliates attended from across Australia |
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)
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 forward to finalising the work during 2026.
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| CVC-WHO team meeting - 10 Feb 2026 |
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| Scoping review team - lead by Dr Kate Freire - 9 Feb 2026 |
FEEDBACK FROM WHO 14 February 2026
Thank you very much - this is wonderful!! Congratulations again to the whole team for the impressive work achieved in just one year. It is truly inspiring and we couldn’t be more pleased with the breadth of your activities and the quality of your inputs bringing the voices of children with disabilities in this space.
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.
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):
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!
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| Wiebke Freese working in The Beehive at CSU |
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| Discussing the index with Dr Helen L. Blake and the CSU copyeditor Dr Mark Filmer |
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."
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.
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| 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.
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| Welcome Wiebke |
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| Kangaroos on CSU's Bathurst campus |
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| Sunset on Wiebke's first night in Bathurst |
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| Bathurst's Machattie Park |
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| Wiebke in The Beehive at The Treehouse |
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| Wiebke's bee-inspired gifts for The Treehouse |
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.
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.
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| Kathy Cologon, Carolyn Gregoric, Tamara Cumming, Lorraine Bennett |
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| Tamara, Sharynne and Lorraine |
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| 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
I am excited to be supervising four wonderful PhD students in 2026:
At Charles Sturt University
At Utrecht University in The Netherlands
Wishing you a productive year everyone!
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| Holly and Sharynne in 2026 |
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Sarah, Sharynne and Carolyn in 2026
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Here are some graphics about the reach of the CVC publications in 2025 - we are very happy with our reach and collaborations in our Centre's first year.
This week the Children's Voices Centre staff came together for a 3-day retreat to celebrate our achievements for 2025 and plan for 2026. We met with DVC-R Neena Mitter and Monique Smith from the DVC-R's office. We also had pesentations from Carly Evans and Aimee Cook from CSU Advancement and Anna Grocholsky from the Research Office.
In 2025 we focused on the establishment of the Centre and The Treehouse. We hosted visiting scholars from USA, Norway and UK and many professionals, children and families who came to visit The Treehouse, We undertook impactful research with children that was presented to the World Health Organization (twice), and at an event with the United Nations Foundation and were one of only a handful of universities to be founding members of the WHO Disability Health Equity Network.
In 2026 we are focusing on our people in order to undertake impactful research. Specifically, children and families; CVC affiliates, adjuncts and HDR students, and professionals, and policy makers. A focus on 2026 will be our Children's Voices Conference (CVC2026) - the fourth time we have run this online interdisciplinary conference. We will also be hosting weekly research seminars and weekly drop-in sessions. We have submitted a number of grants, books, and journal articles - and have more on the way.
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| Carolyn ready to work in The Beehive |
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| Sharynne, Lorraine, Carolyn, Kathy and Tamara at The Treehouse |
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| First morning |
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| Tamara, Kathy, Lorraine, Carolyn and Sharynne |
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| Lunch with Anna |
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| Meeting with Neena and Monique |
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| Poppy popped in to start our morning with happiness |
