CVC2026 - next milestone almost ticked off

Over the past 2 weeks we have been reviewing all submitted CVC2026 presentations, particularly checking them for ethical approvals and image source permission. We only have 7 more videos to review and 15 more to upload. The others are done. 

A huge thank you to Carolyn, Amy, Emma and our CVC scientific review committee (esp. Arifa Rahman, Suzanne Hopf, Belinda Downey, Lindsay Smith, Jo Grimmond, Helen Blake, Katrina Gersbach, Sarah Bartlett, Kate Crowe, Holly McAlister, Kate Margetson, Alam Hossain, Kasey Garrison and Lysa Dealtry, Carolyn Gregoric, Sharynne  McLeod)

Caregiver-implemented Hanen® programs: A narrative review of programs for children with speech, language and communication needs

Congratulations to Sarah Bartlett who has had her first journal article accepted for publication from her PhD: 

Bartlett, S. & McLeod, S. (2025, in press December). Caregiver-implemented Hanen® programs: A narrative review of programs for children with speech, language and communication needs. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

Here is the abstract: 

Purpose: Hanen® programs have been used by clinicians to support caregivers of young children with communication needs to learn optimal ways to respond in everyday interactions and facilitate child-oriented strategies that promote interaction and language. This review aimed to evaluate peer-reviewed literature regarding Hanen® programs for children with speech, language, and communication needs regarding the credibility, nature, quality, scope of the research, and outcomes of the research findings.
Method: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) protocol was used. Of 196 papers documenting Hanen® interventions, 57 papers met inclusion criteria. Studies were synthesized and evaluated to rate (a) credibility/ levels of evidence, (b) nature of existing research: efficacy, effectiveness, and perceived effectiveness, (c) quality of the studies, (d) scope of evidence, and (e) outcomes for each Hanen® program for children with speech, language, and communication needs.
 Results: Credibility: Studies of Hanen® programs were reviews (7%), randomized controlled trials (17.5%), non-randomized controlled trials and mixed methods (31.6%), case-control or cohort studies (26.3%), qualitative reviews (1.8%) or employed qualitative methods (15.7%). Nature: The majority were efficacy studies (57.9%), others were perceived effectiveness (24.6%), and effectiveness studies (8.8%). Quality: Few studies were rated as high quality. Scope: Most studies related to two Hanen® programs (It Takes Two To Talk® and More Than Words®) conducted across eleven countries (Canada, USA, Spain, Turkey, Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Malaysia), and a few studies evaluated adaptations of Hanen® programs (e.g., telehealth). The studies reported on dyad interactions; child language, behavior, and autism; and caregiver perceptions, stress, and self-efficacy. Outcomes: Evidence supporting significant communication outcomes for different programs exists; however mixed results demonstrate a variety of language, interaction, acceptability, feasibility, and maintenance outcomes. 
Conclusions: A range of evidence supports the use of Hanen® programs in its original format, with acceptability reported by families from target communities (e.g., middle class families) and educators (e.g., westernized countries). Effectiveness studies in real world contexts conclude that future research could evaluate content flexibility and adaptations to meet a diversity of families and communities. A precision family initiative (PFI) has been suggested to shift future research from does Hanen® work, to how can Hanen®-based intervention optimize outcomes for individual families.

Review of children's perspectives of health and healthcare

This morning our team met with the CSU librarian Claudio Dionigi to plan our search strategy for our systematic/scoping review for our project invited by the WHO to consider children's perspectives of health and healthcare.

Sharynne  McLeod, Kate Freire, Kate Crowe, Claudio Dionigi, Suzanne Hopf, Cyrena Hunt-Madden

 

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee

The work of the ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee is done. We have reviewed the abstracts, (accepted/rejected/recommended changes), reviewed the submitted video presentations (accepted/recommended changes), created the ECV2024 Conference Proceedings book. Our work is done. Over to the Organising Committee for the next steps. Thanks to Dr Suzanne Hopf and Dr Leanne Gibbs for chairing the  ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee.

Suzanne Hopf, Sharynne McLeod, Leanne Gibbs

 

Covidence review of services and resources to support Indigenous children's communication

Today Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Sarah Bartlett and I met to advance our Covidence review of services and resources to support Indigenous children's speech, language and communication.

Here is our PRISMA diagram from our work so far. We have gone from 2100 articles to 75 to be included in our review.

Carolyn, Sarah and Sharynne

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee

The abstracts for the ECV2024 Conference are due on 29th July - so today we had the ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee meeting and learned how to review abstracts.

ECV2024 Scientific Review Committee chairs: Dr Suzanne Hopf, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Dr Leanne Gibbs

Outgrowing speech sound disorders: A review of To, McLeod, Sam and Law (2022)

Carol Westby published a review of our recent article:

Westby, C. (2022). Outgrowing speech sound disorders. Word of Mouth, 34(1), 5-8. https://doi.org/10.1177/10483950221101453a 

To, C. K. S., McLeod, S., Sam, K. L., & Law, T. (2022). Predicting which children will normalize without intervention for speech sound disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 65(5), 1724-1741. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00444



 

VietSpeech Study 2 revisions

Publishing large-scale studies takes a lot of work. We recieved helpful comments on our main VietSpeech Study 2 paper which have required extensive revisions. We have been asked to combine two papers into one huge paper and do a few more analyses. I really miss working with Dr Audrey Wang - so it was nice to get back into the statistical analysis of these data today. We are very proud of the work that has gone into this paper and look foward to when it will be deemed ready for publication.

Dr Audrey Wang and Sharynne

Reviewers' feedback: Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood

We have just received reviews of our chapter titled "Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood" which we submitted in May to "Hierarchies of Disability Human Rights" edited by Stephen Meyers, Megan McCloskey and Gabor Petri for the Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Book Series to be published by Routledge Press, NY. 

While there were a few minor recommended changes we were thrilled with their overall summaries of our chapter: 

Reviewer 1: "This is an important and well-written chapter. It clearly established the international legal framework for the right to education, describes barriers to that right, and provides a case study on children with disabilities’ right to education in Australia..." 

Reviewer 2: "This is a well-written chapter that readers will find fascinating. Communication rights seem to be somewhat hidden in disability human rights discussion, therefore this chapter will be a valuable addition to our edited volume..."

Jess McLeod and Sharynne

WHO Caregiver Skills Training Programme review

I have just completed my review of the World Health Organization Caregiver Skills Training Programme for Families of Children with Developmental Delays and Disabilities. I was invited in my role as Deputy Chair of the Child Speech Committee of the International Association of Communication Sciences (IALP)

Review of McLeod et al. (2020)

A review of the following manuscript has just been published in the Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology (JCPSLP, vol 23, no. 1, p. 74)). It was written by Andy Smidt

https://speechpathologyaustralia.cld.bz/JCPSLP-Vol-23-Issue-1-2021/48/

McLeod, S., Ballard, K. J., Ahmed, B., McGill, N., & Brown, M. I. (2020). Supporting children with speech sound disorders during COVID-19 restrictions: Technological solutions. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 5(6), 1805–1808. 

It concluded: "McLeod et al.’s (2020) review shows there are many technological service options developed prior to COVID-19, particularly for clients living rurally, that are now useful during a pandemic. Their review summarised that while most indirect treatments where non speech pathologists (parents, educators) deliver intervention have not been effective, Apraxia World has been extremely successful. Overall, this review is an interesting paper for clinicians to read in order to support children with speech sound disorders and their families during the pandemic." (Smidt, 2021, p. 47)

The Informed SLP reviews our paper on assessments for toddlers with cleft lip and palate

The Informed SLP has just published a review that includes our LSHSS paper on assessments for toddlers with cleft lip and palate. Their review is titled Under pressure: Looking beyond oral pressure consonants in children with cleft palate https://www.theinformedslpmembers.com/peds-under-review/under-pressure-looking-beyond-oral-pressure-consonants-in-children-with-cleft-palate

Our paper that they reviewed is here:

Cronin, A., Mcleod, S., & Verdon, S. (2020). Holistic Communication Assessment for Young Children With Cleft Palate Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health:Children and Youth. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00122

ICPLA2020 - Abstract review time

The International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association conference will be held in Glasgow in September 2020. Today I finished reviewing abstracts to be considered for inclusion on the program. Some very interesting papers have been proposed.

Reviewing ASHA convention submissions

My PhD students, postdocs and I are on different committees for the 2017 ASHA convention. Thc Convention Program Committees are listed here. Here are the committees we are on:

• Cultural and Linguistic Diversity - Helen Blake, Sharynne McLeod, Ben Pham 
• Speech Sound Disorders - Anna Cronin, Sarah Masso 
• Global Issues - Suzanne Hopf 

This year 3,132 abstracts were submitted, and the review process commenced this week. It is interesting to see the papers that have been proposed.

Review of Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children

A review of our book “Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children” has been published in The Phonetician, Volume 105-106 (2012 I/II), pp. 121-124. The review was written by Judith Rosenhouse from Israel who wrote: 

"...The numerous chapters of the book present much more information than expected about the linguistic and practical problems in treating multilingual children with speech sound disorders and the possible outcomes of various linguistic interactions. Yet this is the tip of the iceberg, as the authors write, because many questions remain un-answered and unresolved, and lack of knowledge or missing research tools, assessment and treatment are noted in almost every chapter. Thus, the principal readers of this book would be practitioners in speech-language pathology, therapist, logopedists, etc. But this volume is not less important for students and researchers interested in linguistics, phonetics and/or phonology who will find here a host of interesting facts and topics for further study." (pp. 123-124)

A previous blog post containing details of the book is here