Applying the World Report on Disability to children’s communication

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication

McLeod, S., McAllister, L., McCormack, J. & Harrison, L. J. (2013, in press August). Applying the World Report on Disability to children’s communication. Disability and Rehabilitation. 

Here is the abstract

Purpose The World Report on Disability is an important milestone in the recognition of people with disabilities; however, the Report acknowledges that people with communication difficulties may be underrepresented in estimates of disability. Consequently, this paper applies the nine recommendations from the World Report on Disability to supporting children’s communication skills.
Method Australia is similar to most Minority World countries since it places high regard on articulate and literate communication. Recent large-scale Australian studies of children with speech, language, and communication needs were reviewed to determine prevalence, impact, and associated environmental and personal factors. Studies of met and unmet need were reviewed and discussed in relation to legislation and policies.
Results Recent years have seen improvements in the collection of and access to disability data about children’s communication, including the involvement of children in research about the impact of communication difficulties on their lives. The prevalence of speech and language impairment in children is high and is associated with poorer educational and social outcomes at school-age. Significant unmet need for services was noted, and there were differences in health, education, and disability policies regarding access to services.
Conclusions Updated legislation, policies, and practices are needed to more effectively support access to services to support children’s communication across health, education, and disability sectors.

Speech pathology in Brazil

Yesterday Sarah Verdon (my PhD student) began her 5 month tour of the world to collect data on best practices in multilingual services for children with speech sound disorders. Her travels will take her to most continents.

Sarah began her trip by visiting the University of São Paulo where 25 students are admitted a year to study speech pathology. She met with Professor Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner, the head of the speech pathology department and Daniela Galea who works with bilingual Portuguese-English speaking children at international schools in São Paulo.

Professor Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner , Sarah Verdon, and Daniela Galea in Brazil

Congratulations Karla

Dr Karla Washington, my colleague (and previous post-doctoral student), has been named as one of six recipients of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Advancing Academic-Research Career Awards for 2013. This award includes $5000 to work with mentors to advance her career in communication sciences and disorders. Congratulations Karla!

Lecturing CSU dental students

Today I drove to the Charles Sturt University Orange campus and delivered a 2-hour lecture to the final year dentistry students titled: "Considering speech, language, and communication needs in children: An overview for dentists." We covered the following topics:

• Part 1: People with speech, language, and communication needs
• Part 2: Oromusculature for speech

I enjoyed meeting the students and answering their questions. Dentists and speech pathologists have a lot to learn from one another.

CSU Dentistry clinic and lecture rooms in Orange

Two manuscripts have just been published

These two manuscripts have just been published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.

1. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., McAllister, L. & McCormack. J. (2013). Speech sound disorders in a community study of preschool children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22, 503–522. doi: 10.1044/1058-0360(2012/11-0123)
2. Lockart, R. & McLeod, S. (2013). Factors that enhance English-speaking speech-language pathologists’ transcription of Cantonese-speaking children’s consonants. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22, 523–539. doi: 10.1044/1058-0360(2012/12-0009)

The first paper is based on the Sound Effects Study, undertaken through an Australian Research Council Discovery grant. The second paper was a part of Rebekah Lockart's masters thesis within my Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. We are now testing SLPs' transcription of Greek.

Thanks Lisa

Lisa McLean has just finished her secondment as business manager for the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE). I have appreciated her friendly support and guidance about budgets, contracts, and procedures for our current research projects:

• McLeod, S., Baker, E. M., McCormack, J. M., Wren, Y. E. &  Roulstone, S. E. (2013-2015). A sound start: Innovative technology to promote speech and pre-literacy skills in at-risk preschoolers (DP130102545). Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant. ($284,551)   
• McLeod, S., Wren, Y., Baker, E., McCormack, J., Crowe, K., Masso, S., & Roulstone, S. (2013-2015). First-phase support for preschool children with speech and phonological awareness difficulties in NSW DEC preschools. New South Wales Department of Education and Communities Grant ($35,000).  
•  McLeod, S. (2009-2013). Speaking my language: International speech acquisition in Australia. Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship (FT0990588). ($686,400)

 While most of the RIPPLE staff work from the Wagga Wagga campus, Lisa is based on my home campus in Bathurst - so I have enjoyed having Lisa close by.

Lisa McLean and Sharynne

Writing an encyclopedia entry

John Bernthal invited me to co-author an encyclopedia entry with him. It has been an interesting experience to write in a different genre. I am so used to referencing my sources, yet encyclopedia entries typically do not provide author (date) citations within text. We have just submitted our revisions and look forward to its publication.
McLeod, S. & Bernthal, J. E. (in press). Speech sounds, articulation of (development of). In P. Brooks, & V. Kemp (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Speaker of the House of Commons draws himself talking

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt Hon John Bercow MP, recently hosted an event for Afasic as they celebrated their 45^th birthday. Afasic is a national organisation that supports families of children with speech, language and communication needs (SCLN) in the UK. It was held at the Speakers House in the House of Commons, London.   
At the event Professor Sue Roulstone gave John Bercow a copy of our book “Listening to children and young people with speech languageand communication needs.” John Bercow had written the Foreword to the book, so was interested to see it. While he was looking at the book, a young woman from Afasic asked him to draw a cartoon. Sue opened our book at chapter based on our Children Draw Talking research and said to him perhaps he’d like to draw himself talking as we had asked the children to do. John drew the young lady a cartoon of himself talking which said something along the lines of ‘I can’t stop talking’.

(Photos courtesy of Afasic)

• Here is the post from 2010 when I attended the same event. http://www.speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/invitation-to-house-of-commons-london.html

ISI Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index

The 2012 ISI Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index has been released. I am pleased to announce that the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology impact factor is as follows: 
2012 = 1.176 (29/66 in rehabilitation)

Our previous impact factors and rankings have been

2011 = 1.000 (32 of 66 in rehabilitation)
2010 = 1.120 (28 of 62 in rehabilitation)

CSU editors of Speech Pathology Australia's journals

Speech Pathology Australia publishes two journals:

• International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (IJSLP)
• Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology (JCPSLP)

I have been the editor of IJSLP for the past 8.5 years, and was editor of the predecessor of JCPSLP(ACQ) for 3 years prior to that.
Jane McCormack (CSU) and Anna O'Callaghan (ex-CSU) currently are co-editors of JCPSLP.
In addition, Nicole Watts Pappas (CSU) has been appointed as the guest editor for the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference Proceedings issue of IJSLP. She was the editor of JCPSLP previously.

Current and past editors of JCPSLP: Nicole Watts Pappas (CSU), Marleen Westerveld,
Kerry Ttofari-Eecen, Sharynne McLeod (CSU), Anna O'Callaghan (ex-CSU), Jane McCormack (CSU)

Invitation to co-chair "Issues in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations" topic at ASHA 2014

The 2014 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention will be held in Orlando, Florida in 20-22 November 2014. Typically this conference is attended by over 12,000 speech-language pathologists from around the world. Professor Lynn Williams, the co-chair for the 2014 convention has invited Brian Goldstein and myself to be topic chairs for the  Issues in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations topic. What an honour! We have said yes, so now the work begins. The first meeting is in September (even before the 2013 convention has been held). We need to assign a committee, invite key speakers, review abstracts, and plan a program of workshops, presentations, and posters.

Bon Voyage Sarah

Sarah Verdon, my PhD student, is leaving tomorrow to travel the world for 5 months. She will be visiting Chile, Brazil, Italy, UK, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, and US. The purpose of her travels is to collect data on best practices services for multilingual children with speech sound disorders and to attend and present papers at 3 conferences:

• International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics conference (Italy)
• Asia Pacific Society of Speech Language and Hearing conference (Taiwan)
• American Speech Language and Hearing Association convention (USA)

Yesterday, Sarah and I submitted two manuscripts to international journals to be considered for publication:

• Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & McDonald, S. (2013). A geographical analysis of speech-language pathology services to support multilingual Australian children. 
• McLeod, S. & Verdon, S. (2013). A review of speech sound assessments in 18 languages other than English. 

I wish Sarah all the best for her travels, look forward to regular updates, and to seeing her in Turin, Italy and Chicago, US on the way.

 

Page proofs

Just when you think your manuscript is finished - you receive page proofs for checking. This week I have spent over 20 hours checking page proofs for two manuscripts that are going to be published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology in August. They both contain many phonetic symbols, and there were many author queries, even though we were very careful in preparing the manuscripts. It is a long way from first submission to publication.

Statistics

Kate Crowe, Sarah Masso, Graham Daniel and I spent last week in Sydney at the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Inc (ACSPRI) winter school undertaking statistics courses. Attendance at the course was supported by the Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network. The knowledge we gained will be useful to ensure that our data entry, coding, and analysis is accurate, efficient, and effective.

Our simplest (but one of the most effective) syntax that we created within SPSS was:
COMPUTE Age=DATEDIFF(DateScreen,DOB,"months").
EXECUTE.

This code meant that the SPSS program could automatically create the child's age in months from the date of birth (DOB) and the date of screening (DateScreen). We also created syntax to code all of Australia's postcodes into deciles relating to advantage/disadvantage, and all of Australia's languages.

Graham Daniel, Kate Crowe, Sarah Masso, and Sharynne McLeod at ACSPRI in Sydney