Welcome Wiebke Freese, visiting CVC from Germany

Welcome to Wiebke Freese who is a PhD student at the University of Lubeck (Universität zu Lübeck), Germany who is visiting the Children's Voices Centre and The Treehouse on the Bathurst campus of Charles Sturt University. It is a joy to host her. 

Wiebke's supervisor is Prof Annette Fox-Boyer - a long-term colleague who has taught me a lot about German children's speech. Interestingly, Dr Sarah Masso, my previous PhD student undertook her postdoctoral scholarship with Annette a few years ago. Last time I saw Wiebke and Annette was at the ICPLA conference in Patras Greece.

 

A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Wiebke Freese and Prof Sharynne McLeod at the Children's Voices Centre

 

Weibke has been welcomed by CSU kangaroos, beautiful skies, and friendly colleagues.

Welcome Wiebke

Kangaroos on CSU's Bathurst campus

Sunset on Wiebke's first night in Bathurst

Bathurst's Machattie Park

Wiebke in The Beehive at The Treehouse

Wiebke's bee-inspired gifts for The Treehouse

Enjoying Spring and the Fossil and Mineral Museum in Bathurst

It is always fun to host visitors in Bathurst. This weekend some of the things we did to introduce Prof Lynn Williams, Camilla Porsanger and their families to Bathurst included enjoying the spring blossoms and visiting the Fossil and Mineral Museum in Bathurst https://museumsbathurst.com.au/afmm/

Chatting with the Deputy Mayor and CSU Councillor Ben Fry

Full house @ The Treehouse

We have had a wonderful week hosting many visitors at The Treehouse.

On Tuesday we had more people working at The Treehouse than we have ever had before:

1. Lorraine Bennett - Senior Administration Officer
2. A/Prof Tamara Cumming - Associate Director 
3. Prof Sharynne McLeod - Director
4. Prof Lynn Williams - Visiting Scholar (visitor)
5. A/Prof Kathy Cologon - Associate Director (visitor)
6. Dr Helen L. Blake - Senior Research Fellow (visitor)
7. Camilla Porsanger - Visiting PhD student from Nord University (visitor)
8. Nicki Simone  - Visiting PhD student from QUT (visitor)

We had Dr Carolyn Gregoric, our Research Manager online too

What a productive and joyful place full of busy bees. 

Kathy, Sharynne, [Carolyn online], Lynn, Lorraine, Tamara

Sharynne, Helen, Kathy, Camilla, Lynn, Tamara

Lorraine and Kathy

Kathy and Lynn

Kathy and Tamara

Sharynne  and Lynn

 

Presentation about Sami language maintenance at the Children's Voices Centre

We were honoured to have a presentation by Camilla Porsanger at the Children's Voices Centre today. She shared with us about the history of the Sami community and languages (North, Lulu and South Sami) and the work she is doing with others in Norway to maintain Sami language and to support children with special needs. She is undertaking such important work.

 

 We concluded her presentation with sharing welcome home soup and some florentines.

Creative gifts for The Beehive and The Treehouse

Today we had "welcome home soup" at The Treehouse with the Children's Voices Centre staff, Prof Lynn Williams and Camilla Porsanger. Lynn had brought some special gifts from USA to decorate The Beehive, the room where she is working while visiting Charles Sturt University. Thank you Lynn we love the creativity of your friends and colleagues in the US!

Prof Lynn Williams, Prof Sharynne  McLeod, Camilla Porsanger, A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Lorraine Bennett

Sharing welcome home soup at The Treehouse

 

A beautiful Spring day in Bathurst

Today was a beautiful Spring Saturday in Bathurst, so we showed Prof Lynn Williams, Camilla Porsanger and their families around. We met a very friendly possum and sampled Annie's Icecream.

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.

 

Welcome Prof Lynn Williams - Visiting Scholar to CVC

Today we welcomed Prof Lynn Williams our Visiting Scholar to the Children's Voices Centre. She will be based at The Treehouse in Bathurst during September. Today she met the CVC staff and students, discussed future grants and research, and noticed the arrival of spring on campus with the blossoms.  We look forward to a very productive month of collaboration.

Welcome to the Bathurst campus of CSU

Welcome to the CVC!

 

 

 At the end of Lynn's first day on the Bathurst campus she was welcomed by a local kangaroo! 

 

CVC welcomes visitors from Gowrie

Today we welcomed visitors from Gowrie NSW https://www.gowriensw.com.au/. There were so many points of connection, including their focus on the pedagogy of democracy.

The Treehouse was still being painted - so we look forward to welcoming them back to see our finalised building. 

Sharynne  McLeod, Narelle Howard, Michelle Richardson, Belinda Rouhan, Tamara Cumming, Rebecca Golden

 

 

 

Visitor to CVC - Lucy Rodgers - Wellcome funded clinical PhD fellowship

This week we have welcomed Lucy Rodgers to the Children's Voices Centre. Lucy's visit is supported by her Wellcome funded clinical PhD fellowship. She is studying her PhD at City St Georges, University of London, UK. Here is her bio

Lucy is a Speech and Language Therapist who has been working in the UK National Health Service for 18 years. In 2021, she was awarded a National Institute of Health Research pre-doctoral clinical academic fellowship. In 2022, she commenced her Wellcome funded ‘health advances in under-represented populations and diseases’ (HARP) clinical PhD fellowship at City St Georges, University of London. In her PhD work, Lucy is developing a novel intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of a SSD and DLD. As well as her subject-specific interests in SSD and DLD, Lucy is passionate about co-design, patient and public involvement (PPI), and supporting healthcare access in under-served groups.

Sharynne  and Lucy standing on Waluu (Mt Panorama) looking over Bathurst

 

Lucy's seminar for the CVC team was titled: Developing a novel, complex intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of speech sound disorder (SSD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). 

A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Prof Sharynne  McLeod, Lucy Rodgers

Here is the abstract

Approximately 40% of 4 year olds with a speech sound disorder (SSD) also have features of a developmental language disorder (DLD) (Eadie et al., 2015). This co-occurring profile is associated with later negative outcomes relating to communication, literacy and quality of life (Lewis et al., 2015; Wren et al., 2016; Hayiou-Thomas et al., 2017). Yet, there are few interventions to date which have been developed to meet the specific needs of this clinical group. The aim is to develop a novel, complex intervention for pre-school children with co-occurring features of SSD and DLD.
Methods: Methods were informed by the Medical Research Council (MRC) guidance for developing  and evaluating complex interventions (Skivington et al., 2021).
•    Phase 1- systematic review to explore similarities and differences between intervention techniques for SSD/DLD and relate to underlying theory.
•    Phase 2- online survey of current clinical practice (108 UK SLTs).
•    Phase 3- two round e-Delphi with 35 UK based expert SLTs to gain consensus on core intervention elements, based on the findings from phases 1 and 2.
•    Phase 4a- refinements to the intervention in response to feedback from 6 parents from low SES and/or non English speaking backgrounds.
•    Phase 4b (current)- six NHS SLTs reviewing the intervention protocol to optimise operationalisation within clinical services.
A mixed steering group of people with lived experience (an adult with DLD, a parent of a child with SSD/DLD) and professionals (3 speech and language therapists, a bilingual education support worker, a specialist teacher) have overseen all project phases.
Results and conclusions: Following the 4 study phases, we now have a draft intervention protocol which has been mapped on to the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) framework (Hoffmann et al., 2014). We also have a corresponding ‘Theory of Change’, which outlines how different intervention components (relating to linguistic and behaviour change theory, and implementation science) are anticipated to interact with each other. The face validity of the intervention has been strengthened by the involvement of a diverse range of relevant professionals and people with lived experience within the intervention development process. However, further refinements may be made to the intervention in response to initial trialling.
Conclusions & Implications: The results suggest that ECE teachers are moderately accurate in judging children’s language skills, while also showing tendencies for judgment inaccuracies. Furthermore, their assessments alone may not suffice for identifying language delays. Combining multiple sources of information is essential. Future research should report detailed teacher and child characteristics to enhance meta-analytic synthesis.

 

Here is Lucy's acknowledgment of country at the beginning of her presentation

As a British citizen I acknowledge the legacy of UK’s colonial history. I acknowledge that I am a visitor to the land of the Wiradjuri people. We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today. We also pay respect to past, present and emerging elders and extend that respect to other Indigenous people who are present.  I would like to encourage everyone to please share the Nation you are joining from today in the chat.

 

Possibility of mobility visit for PhD student from Nord University

Tonight I had a wonderful conversation with Camilla and her two PhD supervisors from Nord University about the possibility of her visiting CSU for 6 months next year. Camilla has Sami heritage and is studying language maintenance of Sami children in Norway. I hope we are able to welcome her to CSU next year - there are so many areas of overlap between our work.