RHRI Symposium

The RHRI Symposium was held 17-18  June in Orange to celebrate  the research funded by a grant to the Charles Sturt University Rural Health Research Institute from the Commonwealth of Australia, represented by the Department of Health (Grant Activity 4-DGEJZ1O/4-CW7UT14).

We presented (virtually) two papers based on the successful outcomes of Project 8: – Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs 

• Improving access to speech pathology services for rural Indigenous children (Sharynne McLeod, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sarah Bartlett, Christie Cain, Jamie Newman, & Carolyn Gregoric)
• Assessing multilingual children in languages not spoken by the clinician: Using an implementation science approach to enhance rural speech pathology services (Kate Margetson & Sharynne  McLeod)

Our research was so productive - in terms of the impact on our learning, communities' support for children's speech, language and communication, and academic outcomes.

Thanks Emily-Jane

Emily-Jane Woodhead has been a fantastic research assistant on our Rural Health Research Institute project over the past 18 months. Today was my last official day working with her in Bathurst. Although she still has a few weeks' work before the end of the project, I head to Greece tomorrow.

Thank you so much Emily-Jane for your unwavering commitment to the project and your gentle insightful way of working with all of the stakeholders. We have had a lot of fun, worked through a lot of challenges and have made an impact on children's lives. Thank you!

OAMS Little Library at Early Years

This morning Emily-Jane Woodhead and Sarah Bartlett sent me these photos of our OAMS Little Library at in the Early Years building - it's wonderful to see it set up and ready to be enjoyed. They have also added our Treehouse poster about acquisition of speech sounds (based on McLeod & Crowe, 2017)

 

Elders morning tea

This morning I was invited to the OAMS Elders' morning tea. It was organised as part of Australia's Biggest Morning Tea to raise money for the Cancer Council.

While I was there, I was able to share our learning and successes with the CEO Jamie Newman - and to have an update about the new hydrotherapy pool and other new initiatives. Jamie will be co-presenting our research at the upcoming Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Adelaide next month.

OAMS CEO Jamie Newman and Sharynne  (shared with permission)

I also learned about children's communication and books from the elders.

Learning from the elders (photo shared with permission)

To top off an excellent day - I was delighted to see that the brand new Little Library in the Dental Clinic waiting room had some books upside-down (showing that they had been used) and the administration officer mentioned how much the children enjoyed reading them. 

OAMS Little Libraries launch

On Thursday we launched the OAMS Little Libraries. What a special day of celebrating the launch of four Little Libraries of children's books written by Indigenous authors and selected by the OAMS community:

1. OAMS Medical
2. OAMS Dental
3. OAMS Early Years
4. OAMS Marang Gunya
   

It has been an exciting research collaboration - and we were thrilled to have members of the OAMS community cutting the ribbon - being joined by local speech pathologists and colleagues from the CSU Rural Health Research Institute. Book passports have been designed for the children to record their reading. A special thanks to Christine Sweeney (OAMS) and Emily-Jane Woodhead (CSU) for all of the behind the scenes work.

CSU team: Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Bartlett

 

RHRI team: Sarah Bartlett, Dr Hazel Dalton, Prof Anna Walduck, Dr Liz Pressick, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne  McLeod

The launch

An OAMS child's first entry in her book passport after reading Kick with My Left Foot with Sharynne 

OAMS team cutting the ribbon: Adam Gollan, Jess Lees (Early Years), Tegan Wood (OAMS Medical), Christine Sweeney, Melinda Paine-Lambden (Close the Gap)

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.

 

 

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

Wiradjuri children's books and Indigenous resources

Today at the Dhuluny Aboriginal Art Market I met two Wiradjuri children's book authors: Larry Brandy and Jessica Leffley. We are purchasing Indigenous resources as part of our current RHRI grant to support rural children's communication.

Jessica Leffley

Resources purchased from Reilly Callie

Discussing the future with Kate Crowe in Sydney

How wonderful to meet up with Kate Crowe during her brief visit to Sydney (from Iceland). We had time to catch up on our current work and to dream about the future. Sydney in winter did not disappoint either.

Sharynne and Kate

Thanks for the children's books in Faroese and Icelandic!

Using and creating children’s books to support children’s communication

This article just appeared in ASHA Leader: Books Provide Full Language Story to Bilingual Students With DLD and talks about how we can use books with multilingual children and to support communication. https://leader.pubs.asha.org/do/10.1044/leader.SCM.29032024.slp-schools-bilingual-dld.34 

The authors recommend Reading A-Z that includes books in the following languages: Spanish, Vietnamese, Polish, Ukrainian and French Children’s books in Vietnamese: https://www.readinga-z.com/worldlanguages/vietnamese/leveled-books/ Children’s books in: https://www.readinga-z.com/worldlanguages/