CVC team meeting

What an amazing team we have at CVC. Each Tuesday team meeting is a celebration of achievements, joint planning and problem solving, and supportive teamwork. Thanks team!

 

Preparing for the Children's Voices Centre launch

The Children's Voices Centre staff are working hard with many people across the university to prepare for our launch next week. Thanks everyone for pitching in to make this a success!

Tamara, Sharynne, Carolyn, Kathy, Lynn and Lorraine looking at the books to be read at the launch

Tamara with our bee, butterfly and ladybird chocolates

Sharynne, Tamara, Carolyn, Kathy, Lynn and Lorraine

Planning the picnic and outdoor activities

Discussing the AV requirements for the launch with Kevin Ng, Karl Shead, and Dom Ingersole

Sharynne  welcoming people to The Treehouse

CVC research opportunity: Widening children’s participation in research

This morning A/Prof Kathy Cologon and Dr Carolyn Gregoric lead the first meeting for Children's Voices Centre affiliates focusing on new projects about "Widening children’s participation in research". Twenty-one people indicate their interest and 10 people were able to join this morning. 

We began by reflecting on Country. Here are a few comments provided by our attendees. 

• "Yamaa (hello) from Wiradjuri country. This morning, as I pulled up to work, a whole mob of roos was bounding through the carpark and I just thought how beautiful that is to see at my place of work!"
• "Warami (hello) everyone! Warami is a greeting in my Dharug language. I am on beautiful Yuin Country. I have been watching a pair of magpies skillfully build a nest outside my window over the last week. Amazing!"  
• "Yiradhu marang (good day) from Wiradyuri Country - I'm down south in Albury on the banks of the Milawa Bila (Murray River)"   

Each person provided an overview of the research they had undertaken with, for and about children. WOW! The past, present and future research is inspiring. We will work together to plan the next steps which may include a scoping review and a Delphi study.

 

Children's Voices Centre - Strategic Planning Week

This week we spent three days in a strategic planing meeting for the Children's Voices Centre focusing on research with, for, and about children.

Monday: Kathy, Tamara, Sharynne 

We began with an acknowledgment of country from Kathy's children on Darkinjung Country thinking of the green and blue of the land and the sky. At the end of the day six kangaroos on Wiradjuri Country bounded past the window of The Treehouse! 

We focused on two drivers for our research:

1. Identifying gaps where children's voices are absent
2. Working with CVC affiliates to grow research, and create opportunities for collaboration, mentoring, and learning together  

We discussed past, current and future research projects, publications (books, special issues), and grants. 

Children's Voices 

Throughout the day we were able to chat with children presenting their vision for the world. They exhorted us to "be more careful with small things" and discussed topics such as homelessness, biodiversity, technology (AI, holograms etc.), and respecting Aboriginal people. Dreams for the future included "Everyone is kind. You can't get sick or hurt. Magic is real. If you get lost you can teleport to your family. You can eat paper." They outlined examples where "the progress we have made throughout history is astonishing" (clean water, roads, respect for people), giving us hope for future progress. 

The children also gave us great ideas for names for sections of The Treehouse that are currently unnamed (we currently have The Billabong, The Nest, The Beehive, The Flowerpatch). Ideas included The Canopy. The Saplings. We need more tadpoles.

Ideas for The Treehouse from children with Kathy, Sharynne and Tamara listening

CSU Advancement

We met with Carly Evans and Justin Williams from CSU Advancement who are profiling the Children's Voices Centre and garnering support for our research and vision. They proposed a high profile event called UNHEARD with key speakers from the CSU alumni. They also identified a number of funding possibilities and key people to connect with.

Justin Williams, Sharynne, Tamara, Kathy, Carly Evans

Tuesday: Lorraine, Carolyn, Tamara, Kathy, Sharynne 

Our whole CVC staff group went through the 12 key performance indicators (KPIs) set for the CVC in our Business Plan and worked through our gains over the past 6 months and what we need to do in the next six months (see below). 

Lorraine, Tamara, Sharynne, Kathy and Carolyn

Voice of the Child Toolkit (MCRI) and Voice of the Child Framework (Australian Government/Griffith Uni)

In the middle of the day, we joined the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) webinar who launched the Voice of the Child Toolkit:

• https://www.ccch.org.au/our-work/project/voice-of-the-child/
• https://www.ccch.org.au/2186

One of the speakers was Janaya Cox who spoke about the Voice of the Child Framework launched by the Federal goverment.

Wednesday: Kathy, Tamara and Sharynne 

We continued our planing and discussions with  two sets of visitors during our day. First Dr Emmaline Lear from the Research Office and second PVCR Indigenous Prof Tony Dreise and Nicole Simone.

Lorraine Bennet, Sharynne  McLeod, A/Prof Tamara Cumming, A/Prof Kathy Cologon, Prof Tony Dreise, and Nicole Simone

Dr Emmaline Lear, A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Prof Sharynne McLeod, A/Prof Kathy Cologon

Throughout our planing week we continued work to build The Treehouse as the physical centre of the Children's Voices Centre to support our resaerch with children. We received a $30K philanthropic grant to support this transformation and appreciated the work already completed with this money - planning the next steps.

We celebrated the achievements we have made to date with our  CVC key performance indicators for 2025. To date our CVC affiliates have 101 unique entries in CRO (125 entries) including: published 2 books, 4 chapters, 51 journal articles, and 2 theses.

The following collaborative research projects are currently underway at the Children's Voices Centre for CVC affiliates and adjuncts to collaborate as editors, authors, reviewers, data analysts, etc.:

1. BOOK: The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (Editor: Sharynne  McLeod. Publisher: Oxford University Press). 
   1 CVC editor and 9 CVC affiliates are chapter authors on 11 chapters.
2. BOOK: Multilingual Aspects of Children's Speech Sounds (Editors: Helen L. Blake, Sharynne McLeod, Kate Margetson & Brian Goldstein. Publisher: Multilingual Matters) 
   3 CVC editors and 10 CVC affiliates are chapter authors on 10 chapters.
3. BOOK: Early Childhood Educators' Emotional Labour (Editors: Tamara Cumming & Mari Saha. Publisher: Routledge)
   1 CVC editor. 
4. SPECIAL ISSUE: Child Language Teaching and Therapy (Q1) (Editors: Sharynne McLeod and Holly McAlister). SPECIAL ISSUE: Child Language Teaching and Therapy (Q1) (Editors: Sharynne McLeod and Holly McAlister). 2 CVC editors, 17 CVC affiliates have submitted 5 papers and 8 CVC affiliates have reviewed papers.
5. SPECIAL ISSUE: Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (Q1) (Editors: Sharynne  McLeod, Kathy Cologon, Helen L. Blake)
   3 CVC editors. Submissions close in October.
6. RESEARCH PROJECT: Children Draw Talking. 15 CVC affiliates involved
   **McLeod, S., Gregoric, C., Davies, J., Dealtry, L., Delli-Pizzi, L., Downey, B., Elwick, S., Hopf, S. C., Ivory, N., McAlister, H., Murray, E., Rahman, A., Sikder, S., Tran, V. H., & Zischke, C. (2025). Children draw talking around the world.  Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-23-00190 
7. RESEARCH PROJECT: Children Draw Playing. Team: Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne McLeod, Belinda Downey 
8. RESEARCH PROJECT: Children Draw Health (to inform WHO)
9. RESEARCH PROJECT: Children's Insights into the Sustainable Development Goals: Team: Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne McLeod, Belinda Downey 
10. RESEARCH PROJECT: Children's Participation in Research: Carolyn Gregoric and Kathy Cologon  - 21 CVC affiliates signed up
11. RESEARCH PROJECT: Scoping Review: Children's Experiences of Healthcare (to inform WHO). Lead: Kate Freire
12.  RESEARCH PROJECT: Arts-based research (to inform WHO): Children's Experiences of Healthcare. Lead: Tamara Cumming

We have a program of visiting scholars where two scholars come and collaborate with our affiliates. Here are our 2025 scholars:

• Dr Red Ruby Scarlett
• Prof Lynn Williams

We have had a number of international PhD students visit, and look forward to welcoming more:

• Ida Wiik Sætherskar, Nord University, Norway 
• Lucy Rogers, City University London, UK funded by the Wellcome Trust
• Camilla Porsanger

 

Learning about Arts Out West's capacity building - including with people with disabilities

Today Tamara Cumming and I had our first meeting with colleagues at Arts Out West. They have many impressive programs - including many to support people with disabilities. We plan to collaborate as part of our research with the World Health Organization. What a wonderful opportunity to learn from the team and the artists. Here are some of their initiatives:

VIV
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/viv/
https://www.thebeautifulandusefulstudio.com/
 
STRAY
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/dog-puppet/
 
VISUAL ARTS IN HOSPITALS
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/hospital-work-2023/
 
YAGANDA BULABUL
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/yaganda-bulabul-art-project/
 
BREWING BALLADS
https://artsoutwest.org.au/pf/brewing-ballads/

Sharynne, Kylie Shead, Kate Smith, Steven Cavanagh, Tamara Cumming

 

Arts Out West Strategic Plan - https://artsoutwest.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ARTS-OUTWEST-Strategic-Plan-2025-2028.pdf

Children's Voices Centre has begun

Welcome to the Children's Voices Centre's new staff members:

• Associate Professor Tamara Cumming, Associate Director Workforce and Policy
• Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Research Manager

We had a wonderful meeting to plan and dream today.

Part of our 3-year focus is for the world to "include children"and grow capacity at The Treehouse.

Carolyn, Tamara and Sharynne

WHO RCM75 Partners’ Briefing

This afternoon I attended the WHO RCM75 Partners’ Briefing. I am representing the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) at the Seventy-fifth session of the World Health Organization Regional Committee for the Western Pacific in Manila, the Philippines in two weeks' time.

WHO documents: https://www.who.int/westernpacific/about/governance/regional-committee/session-75/documents

Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group (ECIR) - First meeting for 2024

Our first meeting for 2024 was held on 15th February for the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group (ECIR) funded by the Sturt Scheme. This is a fantastic group of over 40 staff and students across the university. It is our third year of funding and in 2024 we will hold our third Early Childhood Voices conference (ECV2024).

https://earlychildhoodresearch.csu.domains/

https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/organisations/early-childhood-interdisciplinary-research-group

ECIR members online across Australia and in Bathurst

Once Upon A Time Foundation meeting in Fort Worth, TX

Today I attended a meeting at the Once Upon A Time Foundation Fort Worth, TX to discuss our grant to consider children's perspectives of speech intervention for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). It was a very collegial meeting to ensure high quality research is undertaken as part of their large-scale CAS intervention research agenda.

IALP Executive Board meeting

Today the Exceutive Board of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) in Auckland, New Zealand ahead of the congress that will be held all week. It was wonderful to met with colleagues, to represent the Child Speech Committee as Chair, and to discuss many issues relating to  professionals and people who are impacted by speech, language, communication, swallowing disorders.

IALP Executive Board meeting - Saturday

IALP Committee Chairs meeting - Sunday afternoon

IALP Board Members/Committee Chairs were thanked at the Opening Ceremony

SPH512 Meet and Greet with Prof Sharynne McLeod

Tonight I was interviewed by Bec Malcolm for the CSU "SPH512 Meet and Greet with Prof Sharynne McLeod". What a great group of people. We ended up chatting for over 90 minutes!

 

Here are the questions they asked in advance: 

SPEECH PATHOLOGY PROFESSION 

• 1. Where do you feel there is the greatest opportunity for influence as the speech pathology profession? 
• 2. It seems that speech pathology is a relatively young (and fast growing) discipline. What are the biggest changes you’ve seen? What do you envisage over the next 10 or 20 years? 
• 3. What is the biggest challenge that speech pathology is currently facing as a profession in your eyes? And how do you think we should look to overcome or address it? 
• 4. You work with and train both teachers and SLPs. Many of us are coming to SLP from an education background. What do you think are the most important things for us to know if that’s us - e.g. any specific challenges that brings etc. 

CHILDREN’S SPEECH TEXTBOOK

• 5. What was/is your vision for how "Children's Speech" is to be used by students and practising speech pathologists? To be read from cover to cover? Using the index to look up certain specific sections? To look up very specific information? Something else? 
• 6. I truly admire your dedication to evidence-based practice and rigor. The Children’s Speech seems like a very thorough textbook. But it was sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees reading through different conflicting studies, e.g. risk factors for SSDs in ch.1. What is your best advice for students reading these sorts of parts of the book? 
• 7. What do you look for when choosing toys for assessment and intervention tasks? What are some of your favourites? 
• 8. When do you expect the next edition of your text book to be published? 9. What are the key updates you plan on making to the textbook that might be helpful for us to know for our studies now? 

 

Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board

Today was the Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board (1-3pm). The agenda was 338 pages (!) - and included the Faculty's Research Report that outlined lots of great work from our Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research team.

Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research (ECIR) Team Meeting

Today our Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research (ECIR) Team Meeting met face-to-face by the first time. We met in Bathurst, Albury and online. Over half of our team (16 people) were available for this inspiring day. We spent time working out WHY we are doing our research. We also established a Twitter community.

ECIR Albury

ECIR Zoom

Meetings - Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board

The Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board met today. I am one of three elected members of the Professoriate. It is an important meeting to attend, celebrate achievements and map the future.

Asia Pacific Society of Speech, Language and Hearing Executive Meeting

Today the executive of the Asia Pacific Society of Speech, Language and Hearing met to discuss many issues including a new website and the forthcoming conference in South Korea in 2023. Manwa (Lawrence) Ng from Hong Kong SAR China is the outgoing president and Sue Ann Lee from USA is the incoming president for 2022.

Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board Meeting

This morning I attended and participated in the bi-monthly Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Board Meeting for October which had a 373 page agenda. I am one of two Elected Members of the Professoriate on the Board. There are only 12 elected members on the board, the remainder are ex-officio positions, so we have an important voice. 

One highlight: "The Faculty is on track to deliver a balanced budget by the end of 2021, which is the result of a significant, focused effort by all budget centre managers over the last 18 months." (p. 23).

The FOAE Research Report was delivered at this meeting. It was great to see the significant contribution made by the School of Education and our FOR code 3903 (that includes Early Childhood Education, previously 1301).

First day in the office for 11 months - more zoom meetings with a different background

Today was my first day back in my office since March 2020 due to COVID restrictions (https://staff.csu.edu.au/home/news-and-events/coronavirus-updates).

Despite being oncampus, all of my meetings were still on zoom. I had 5 excellent meetings today - and have provided photos of two.

The second meeting was to farewell Kate Margetson as she goes on maternity leave until 31 August. It was a very helpful handover meeting of all of her tasks to the rest of the VietSpeech team.

In the fourth meeting Dr Nicole McGill, Dr Audrey Wang and I met to discuss requested revisions to a journal article. It was very productive and we should have the revisions finished soon.

Dr Nicole McGill, Sharynne and Dr Audrey Wang

Dr Van Tran, Sharynne, Katherine White, Kate Margetson, Dr Sarah Verdon

APSSLH Executive Council Members Meeting

Today I attended the APSSLH Executive Council Members Meeting. We discussed issues including the delay of our conference that was to be held in Hong Kong (due to COVID-19). The last conference was held in Japan in 2017. We also discussed changes to committee members' terms of office that are linked to the conference dates. The current committee members are below:

The timezones for our meeting were:

Some of the timezones for the APSSLH Meeting (+ New Zealand)

Speech Pathology Australia Annual General Meeting and Awards Ceremony

Tonight I virtually attended the Speech Pathology Australia Annual General Meeting and Awards Ceremony . We were meant to have this at our National Conference that would have begun last night in Darwin, but was postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19. There were 132 attendees and 6 panelists (SPA Board).

Congratulations to the City of Adelaide for their Community Contribution Award for their commitment to communication access.
Congratulations also goes to:

• Cathy Clark - Service to the Association Award
• Dr Robyn O'Halloran - Elinor Wray Award
• Jennifer Peach - Elinor Wray Award
• Dr Hilary Johnson - Life Member
• Prof Pamela Snow - Life Member

VietSpeech team meeting

We had another very constructive VietSpeech team meeting today. There is so much to discuss and plan due to the restrictions from COVID-19.

Dr Sarah Verdon, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Audrey Wang, Kate Margetson, Dr Van Tran