It takes a villiage to submit a grant

Thanks to everyone who has supported me to get my latest grant application completed including DVC-R Neena Mitter, PVCI Michael Friend/Jason White, Lisa Limbrick, Sharon Geltch, Annette Harris, Lee Williamson, Helen L. Blake, Stefania Graham (who clicked submit) and Emma Hayes and Emma Scanlon who celebrated submission 

Learning from Lee on Sunday evening!

Support from Helen on Wednesday

CSU Research Office - Stefania Graham

Celebrating submission with Emma S at The Treehouse

Grants submitted

Congratulations to A/Prof Kathy Cologon who has submitted two grants on behalf of the Children's Voices Centre. They are good grants - we hope they are successful.

 

CeTasSSD data planning and collection is underway

We have begun data collection for our CeTasSSD study! Tonight 715 entries have been recorded from the caregivers of 4- to 5-year-olds. While some entries will not be analysed (a few parents entered twice, some did not give consent to be involved in the research etc.), we are going to have a large number of children to help us learn about children's speech, and the best screening pathway for the state. Thank you to Kate Crowe, Felicity Laurence and Lisa Johnson who have overseen this online data collection phase from parents.

Today we also met to work through the practicalities of the data collection phase that begins next week to talk with children to listen to their production of speech sounds and learn from them about what they think about their speech. It was a really productive day of problem solving and getting things in place. Thanks Helen Blake, Ally Barrett, and Emma Scanlon - plus our special helper :)

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Catholic Education Tasmania grant meeting

We had an excellent meeting today to work on plans for 2026 for our data collection. Dr Kate Crowe joined us from Canada (better timezone than Iceland) and it was great to have Nicola back with us.

 

Grants submitted

In amongst all of the business in Bathurst and across the world for CVC staff members - we have also submitted grants to (hopefully) work on a new exciting project promoting the voices of unheard children. Thanks especially to A/Prof Tamara Cumming and A/Prof Kathy Cologon and the support from the CSU grants office. Fingers crossed.

Invited presentation - ECR Grant Writing Program

Today I was an invited presenter at the CSU Early Career Researcher Grant Writing Program: Module 5.  I was invited by Dr Emmaline Lear to talk about Tips and Tricks on Research CVs. I received a nice email at the end of the presentation:

"Thank you for joining us today to share your wisdom, advice and tips on a writing a Research CV. While your presentation went beyond this, your creative messaging around working collaboratively for the benefit of others never ceases to be inspiring.!" 

Thanks for the opportunity!

Planning for Lucy to come back to CVC

This afternoon I met online with Lucy Rodgers (UK) to discuss her next grant application so that she can come back to the Children's Voices Centre. We really enjoyed Lucy's visit earlier this year, so look forward to her coming again.

 

Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): Place, people, activity, and emotion

The following paper just has been accepted for publication

McCormack, J., Cronin, A., McLeod, S., Ireland, M., Wang, C., & Tiong, C. (2025, accepted July). Children’s drawings of intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): Place, people, activity, and emotion. Child Language Teaching and Therapy.

It is one of the outcomes from our work on our grant funded by Once Upon a Time to consider perspectives of children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) who were undertaking DTTC intervention.  

Here is the abstract:

Sourcing and including the views of children in speech and language therapy aligns with Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This research explored the perspectives of 30 children (3;9 – 8;7 years) with childhood apraxia of speech regarding their experiences of Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing intervention. Children lived in the United States or Australia and had engaged in one of three intervention studies exploring: delivery by their parent or speech and language therapist (SLT); delivery in high or low dose; and delivery in massed or distributed format. Children shared their perspectives of intervention through drawing a picture of themselves during intervention, describing their drawings, and identifying emojis responding to questions about intervention. Five focal points were identified in the drawings: Place (73.33%: environment, intervention materials, and transitions), People (73.33%: body parts and facial expressions, relationships and connection, and sense of self), Activity (20.00%: words, talking, and listening), Emotion (53.33%: positive and negative), and Not Talking (6.67%). Many participants felt happy about “speech practice” ( J  62.50%) and who did speech practice with them ( J  62.50%) but were divided in how they felt about the number of times ( J  33.3%) and the length of time ( J  29.17%) of speech practice. Children’s perspectives can be considered when designing and delivering intervention.

Here are two of the insightful drawings by the children involved in the project showing their involvement in intervention. These drawings will be included in the publication. Each drawing shows the child on the left and their speech-language pathologist on the right. Note the environment (table in figure 1 and door, table, chair, stickers in figure 2).

 

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.

Peer review - ARC Discovery Program Fellowships grants

I have just had the pleasure to read Discovery Program Fellowships grant applications and submit my reviews. What excellent research is being proposed.

New Grant - Brazil-UK Network on Speech Sound Disorders

We have received the welcome news that we have been successful on the following grant to continue our international collaborations: Fiszbein Wertzner, H., Wren, Y., (McLeod, S.) (2025-2026). Brazil-UK Network on Speech Sound Disorders. Academy of Medical Sciences Networking Grant Scheme (NGR2\1942 )(TOTAL£23,500.00) (CSU £4,367.00) This grant will enable continued collaboration with my colleagues - following on from our trip to Brazil in 2024. Professor Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner - Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil Professor Yvonne Wren - Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK

Children's Voices Centre receives first philanthropic donation

We are so grateful that today we have received our first philanthropic donation ($30K) to support the work of the Children's Voices Centre! Thank you so much to the generous donor, and to Justin Williams from CSU Advancement who has championed our impactful research.

https://www.csu.edu.au/office/advancement

https://www.csu.edu.au/office/advancement/our-projects/childrens-voices-centre 

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.

Australian Research Council LIEF assessors' reports

Today we received very encouraging assessors' reports for our Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant submission. We hope this translates to a positive outcome in a few months' time. 

https://www.arc.gov.au/funding-research/funding-schemes/linkage-program/linkage-infrastructure-equipment-and-facilities

Visiting OAMS and planning our research

Today we visited the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service as part of our Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI). Emily-Jane Woodhead and I were able to visit in person and Sarah Bartlett was prevented from driving to Orange by the significant weather event across the state.

• We spent the morning with Ebony Hay, the Child Health Navigator at OAMS and learned more about the important work she does with children across the city and district, particularly in schools. She has a number of excellent programs to screen and support children's hearing, some of which are associated with Hearing Australia. 
• We spent the afternoon with Dr Liz Pressick from RHRI sharing insights between our research projects. 
• Finally, I worked with Cathie Matthews to finalise her MPhil Endorsement presentation that she will present next week. 
• Just before we arrived, we learned that we had received ethics approval from the AH&MRC https://www.ahmrc.org.au/ethics-at-ahmrc/ so now need approval from CSU to be able to proceed.
  

It was an insightful and productive day. 

Emily-Jane Woodhead, Ebony Hay (OAMS), Sarah Bartlett, Sharynne McLeod

Emily-Jane Woodhead, Liz Pressick (RHRI), Sharynne McLeod

Cathie Matthews and Sharynne McLeod

Rural Health Research Institute Grant research team meeting to discuss ethics

Today we had a CSU Rural Health Research Institute Grant team meeting to discuss our ethics application that was submitted last week - and how we can ensure that we undertake respectful research where we support staff, children, families and one another.

Helen Blake, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sharynne, Kate Margetson, Sarah Bartlett

Visiting RHRI CSU and OAMS in Orange

Today was Emily-Jane Woodhead's first visit to the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) at Charles Sturt University in Orange and the Orange Aboriginal Medical Service. We were made to feel so welcome in both locations. It was great to meet with Dr Hazel Dalton and Dr Liz Pressick at RHRI. They then accompanied us to OAMS where we were welcomed by Jamie Newman (CEO), Sarah Griffiths-Lanser (Medical Administration Lead) and Ebony Hay (Child Health Navigator).

Charles Sturt University Orange Campus

Sharynne McLeod, Jamie Newman, Hazel Dalton, Liz Pressick, Emily-Jane Woodhead, Sarah Griffiths-Lanser, Ebony Hay

CSU RHRI: Liz, Sharynne, Hazel and Emily-Jane

RHRI Grant - "Improving access to services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs"

We are so pleased to have been funded by the CSU Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) for the project titled "Improving access to speech pathology services for rural children with speech, language and communication needs" ($321,832) for 1.5 years. 

Of particular importance in rural areas is the consideration of culturally appropriate and equitable care. There are two groups we are supporting in this grant 

1. CHILDREN: Indigenous, multilingual and multicultural Australian children with speech-language and communication needs. 
2. PROFESSIONALS: The primarily monolingual monocultural speech-language pathology workforce who support multilingual children across NSW (Nancarrow et al., 2023; Verdon et al., 2014). 

Part of this work will be in association with an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation who initiated and invited us to work with them on a component of the project. 

AIMS 

1. To understand the prevalence and service requirements of children from a rural Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and to design a trial to improve access to speech pathology services that best meets their needs 
2. To equip rural SLPs to work cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, especially in languages they do not speak 

Here is our progress to February 2024 

1. The staff and students have been appointed and have begun. We met virtually in December 2023 to establish the team:

• Prof Sharynne McLeod - Chief Investigator
• Kate Margetson - Postdoctoral Scholar
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric - Postdoctoral Scholar
• Emily-Jane Woodhead - Research Officer
• Sarah Bartlett - PhD student
• Cathie Matthews - Masters' student (supported by the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme)

2. Ethics applications – Phase 1 has been approved; Phase 2 in progress 

3. Work with Dr Hazel Dalton regarding practice population profiles and data 

4. Submission of manuscript to Q1 journal addressing Indigenous Australian children with speech, language and communication needs 

5. Abstracts accepted for presentation to the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Perth, May 2024. 

6. Submission of manuscript to Q1 journal addressing pilot research testing Target Word as a service model 

Data collection has begun for our DTTC Once Upon a Time Foundation Grant

Today Dr Anna Cronin met with Marie Ireland (research assistant) and myself to document the commencement of our DTTC Once Upon a Time Foundation grant. One huge achievement is that the box containing packs of 10 markers have made it to Marie in the US for the children to use for their drawings (we have had a lot of angst organising this!). Marie has made a video with a child who has agreed to be on advisory committee. Anna will go to the US to meet with the rest of the team next week. I can't wait to see the children's drawings and feedback on their speech interventions.

ECIR Workshop: Internal Grant Writing

 Today, Dr Emmaline Lear, Manager Research Development, Office of Research Services and Graduate Studies presented a workshop titled "ECIR Internal grant writing" to our Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Sturt Scheme team. This complemented the presentations from the ECIR Research Retreat where we also had presentations from the CSU Research Office about External Grant Writing and Research Impact. Thanks Emmaline for your informative session.