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.
This week we have attended and presented at the Oceania and Indigenous Trans-national Methods and Practices Symposium focusing on Nation-building in the Global South.
Nation-building in the Global South
An initiative of the Oceania and Global Indigenous Research Hub (Charles Sturt University)
September 11-12th, 2025
Orange, CSU Campus & Hybrid
The symposium brings together expert speakers on First Nations nation-building in the Global South. The program focuses on the important arms of nation-building in the areas of: Language; Inter-cultural and trans-national exchange; Education Governance; Energy and Water sovereignty; Human Rights; and Health and Wellbeing. Each of these arms requires innovative methodologies and data collection to support the diversity of sovereignties in the Global South.
The purpose of the symposium is to highlight existing activities of nation-building as well as new approaches with an emphasis on trans-national and inter-cultural methodologies and data collection.
The 2-day symposium began with a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony by Uncle Dale Carr.
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| Lynn Williams, Camilla Porsanger, Sharynne McLeod and Uncle Dale Carr |
During the first morning of the symposium were invited to present the following paper
Building the present and the future: Indigenous children’s speech, language and literacy
Sharynne McLeod, Jamie Newman, Christine Sweeney, Sarah Bartlett, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Carolyn Gregoric.
Christine Sweeney from Orange Aboriginal Medical Services, Orange and I presented the paper.
Congratulations Kate Margetson who has just had the following manuscript accepted for publication that was written during her postdoc It is the next step in the research about the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL)
Margetson, K. & McLeod, S. (2025). Multilingual speech assessment: Using an implementation science framework to explore acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication.
Here is the abstract
Purpose: The Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL) offers a new, evidence-based clinical protocol for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to assess speech in unfamiliar languages. This study used implementation science to investigate SLPs’ current multilingual speech assessment practices, determine the prospective acceptability of the SACHL, and compare current confidence to prospective confidence with the SACHL.
Method: The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA) were used to explore innovation deliverers’ (SLPs’ and student SLPs) prospective acceptability of the innovation (SACHL). Attendees at in-person and online SACHL presentations were invited to participate. 360 participants commenced an online questionnaire exploring current practices, transcription skills, confidence and acceptability of the SACHL. Statistical tests compared attendees at different presentations, SLPs and students SLPs, and monolingual and multilingual participants.
Results: The majority of participants indicated low current confidence in assessing multilingual children. Most SLPs assessed, transcribed, and analyzed multilingual children’s speech in English; but rarely or never applied these practices in children’s home language(s). The majority of participants rated the SACHL as being culturally responsive, well-designed, easy to understand, and that it would increase diagnostic accuracy. There were concerns around the time burden in using the SACHL. Most (87.45%) indicated they would like to use the SACHL in clinical practice, and there was a statistically significant improvement between current confidence and prospective confidence.
Conclusions: The SACHL was evaluated by SLPs and student SLPs to be an acceptable clinical protocol to assess children’s speech in unfamiliar languages.
After 18 months our research project with OAMS has ended. This week we said farewell to Emily-Jane Woodhead as our amazing research assistant (0.4FTE) and wrapped up our research.
Throughout the project we purchased books and toys to use with the children during the research. Now we are able to donate them to OAMS for future children and families to use them. The books were donated to four Little Libraries as well as to some of the elders and families who participated.
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
The Speech Pathology Australia National Conference (https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/Public/Public/CPD-events/SPA-conference/2025/Home.aspx) is in Adelaide 13-15 June 2025. I am unable to attend as I am going to Greece. Sarah Bartlett and Suzanne Hopf are attending. Here are our papers:
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| Jamie Newman and Sarah Bartlett presenting our paper at SPA 2025 |
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!
Dr Kate Margetson has been working with me as a postdoc for 2-days per week for the past 1.5 years. It has been an amazing time of developing the SACHL using the implementation science processes. We will end her postdoc in Greece at the ICPLA conference. Congratulations Kate on all you have achieved so far - I know that your work will continue to inspire SLPs' practice and change multilingual children's communication capacity.
Aim: To equip rural speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to work cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, especially in languages they do not speak
Outcomes against objectives:
Outputs (Grants, Publications, etc.):
Journal articles
Presentations
CONGRATULATIONS KATE! What an amazing legacy!
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)
Congratulations to Dr Kate Margetson who has just had this paper accepted for publication
Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2025). Cross-linguistic transfer in Vietnamese-English speech. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
Here is the abstract
Purpose
Typically developing multilingual children’s speech may include mismatches and phonological patterns that are atypical in monolingual peers. One possible reason for mismatches is cross-linguistic transfer, when structures unique to one language are used while speaking another language. This study explored cross-linguistic transfer in Vietnamese-English–speaking children’s and adults’ speech at phoneme and syllable levels.
Method
Children (n = 66) aged between 2;0 and 8;10 and adult family members (n = 83) completed single word speech assessments in Vietnamese and English. Cross-linguistic transfer of non-shared consonants was analyzed in terms of frequency, patterns and direction of transfer. Syllable structure patterns in English consonant clusters (cluster reduction, cluster simplification, epenthesis) were identified, as consonant clusters do not occur in Vietnamese.
Results
Cross-linguistic transfer of non-shared consonants occurred in most children’s speech at least twice (75.76%; n = 66), tended to happen when the target was non-shared and occurred at a low frequency. During Vietnamese speech assessment, 21.82% of children’s and 26.30% of adults’ mismatches were due to cross-linguistic transfer of English consonants. During English speech assessment, 2.84% of children’s and 24.33% of adults’ mismatches were due to cross-linguistic transfer of Vietnamese consonants. Direction of cross-linguistic transfer was significantly associated with children’s age and language proficiency. Bi-directional cross-linguistic transfer only occurred in the youngest children (2;6 - 4;5 years). English consonant clusters were impacted by syllable structure patterns for both children (35.76%) and adults (22.95%), indicating these mismatches in Vietnamese-English-speaking children’s speech may be due to development, cross-linguistic transfer of Vietnamese syllable structure to English and/or ambient phonology.
Conclusions
Cross-linguistic transfer occurred in Vietnamese-English–speaking children’s and adults’ speech. These findings highlight the importance of assessing multilingual children’s speech in each language, considering interaction between languages, and identifying reasons for mismatches to ensure accurate diagnosis.
Today it was such an honour to present our research learning and progress with the 100+ staff at the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service (OAMS) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) day. We were given 45 minutes to discuss our 5-phase project that concludes at the end of June.
It has been such an honour and privilege to work alongside the amazing team to support children's speech, language, communication, and literacy. We hope that the books, resources and learnings we have planted grow roots and blossom in the future. We'd love to continue collaborations if there was a pathway forward.
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| Sharynne presenting at the OAMS CQI day on 30th May 2025 |
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| Sharynne and Sarah Bartlett spent the day with the OAMS team |
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.
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| OAMS CEO Jamie Newman and Sharynne (shared with permission) |
I also learned about children's communication and books from the elders.
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| Learning from the elders (photo shared with permission) |
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:
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.
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| CSU team: Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Bartlett |
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| RHRI team: Sarah Bartlett, Dr Hazel Dalton, Prof Anna Walduck, Dr Liz Pressick, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Prof Sharynne McLeod |
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| The launch |
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| An OAMS child's first entry in her book passport after reading Kick with My Left Foot with Sharynne |
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| OAMS team cutting the ribbon: Adam Gollan, Jess Lees (Early Years), Tegan Wood (OAMS Medical), Christine Sweeney, Melinda Paine-Lambden (Close the Gap) |
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.
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.
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| Karen Trengove (Learn2Communicate), Dr Kate Margetson (CSU), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Dr Rebecca Sutherland (The University of Sydney) |
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| Dr Kate Margetson describing data from our research |
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| 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.
Here are the presentations from our team at ECV2024 this week
Today we hosted another information session about Phase 2 of the Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Languages (SACHL, Margetson & McLeod, 2025).
https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl
We met with another group of very enthusiastic participants who are keen to collaborate with us to develop resources for multilingual children and families across the world.
We also showed the attendees the Multilingual Children’s Speech website - 1000+ free resources in 100+ languages - https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home
One of the attendees said "Languages are a very big part of my identity"
The first SACHL information session for people who want to participate with us in Phase 2 was held tonight.
It was great to see how many people came along for a session that was held at 8-9pm on a Monday evening!
We provided the first look at the data from Phase 1 - the need for this tool is compelling
We also showed the attendees the Multilingual Children’s Speech website - 1000+ free resources in 100+ languages - https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home
Congratulations to my PhD student Sarah Bartlett who traveled to Bathurst to present her PhD proposal. Her topic is: Caregiver-implemented Intervention to Support Children’s Communication: Considering the Hanen Programs® with Underserved Communities
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| Sarah presenting her endorsement in Bathurst and online |
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| Prof Sharynne McLeod, Sarah Bartlett, A/Prof Will Letts (Head, School of Education) |
Background. Children’s ability to communicate is supported by family and caregivers during children’s development. Some children have difficulty communicating and have speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). Caregiver-implemented interventions are family centred and focus on empowering caregivers to support children’s communication development. Hanen® programs are a common exemplar of an evidence-based caregiver-implemented intervention with 57 studies from 15 countries demonstrating the programs’ efficacy, effectiveness and perceived effectiveness. Hanen® programs were developed in Canada and evidence supporting their use largely reflects perspectives of Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) researchers and participants. Hanen® programs have potential for supporting underserved communities in Australia including families who multilingual, humanitarian migrants, or Indigenous; however, the applicability has not been examined.
Aim. This study aims to understand if caregiver-implemented interventions are suitable or can be modified to be responsive to the communication needs of children and families in underserved communities in Australia.
Method. This PhD program will comprise three parts. A scoping/narrative review will be undertaken to document current evidence for Hanen® programs and the demography of researchers and participants. The PhD candidate received invitations to work with three underserved communities to undertake research regarding the applicability of the Hanen programs: families who are asylum seekers, migrant families from low SES communities, and a rural Indigenous community. Conversations have been undertaken with the communities to consider the acceptability and feasibility of the Hanen® program. If appropriate, the communities will co-develop and adapt elements of Hanen® programs to support caregivers of children who have SLCN. Quantitative and qualitative tools will be identified to measure outcomes of the adapted Hanen® programs during trials in the communities. In response to consultation with the Indigenous community, a Hanen® program will not be implemented. Instead, an international scoping review of services and resources for supporting children with SLCN from Indigenous communities will be undertaken to inform their future community-driven support.
Conclusions. Professionals routinely support families from a range of different cultures. Much of the evidence for interventions typically reflects the values and beliefs of WEIRD communities. It is essential for professionals to provide culturally safe and responsive practices for all families. This PhD program will contribute to co-designing and understanding the acceptability and feasibility of a caregiver-implemented intervention (adapted Hanen® program) to support children’s communication across three underserved communities.
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| Sharynne and Sarah on the Bathurst campus |
