COVID-19 books for children

There have been a number of books created for children to unpack COVID-19 and what children can do (washing hands etc.). Here are some:

• UNICEF: My Hero is You (published in 100+ languages): https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/iasc-reference-group-mental-health-and-psychosocial-support-emergency-settings/my-hero-you 

• Queensland Health: Birdie and the Virus: https://www.childrens.health.qld.gov.au/covid-19-birdie-virus/
• Australian Childhood Foundation: Understanding Coronavirus For Kids: https://professionals.childhood.org.au/app/uploads/2020/04/Talking-to-Children-COVID-19-Social-Story.pdf
  

COVID-19 masks

Masks are being worn more frequently in Australia to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Here are some resources:

• Speech Pathology Australia: Access to surgical masks "The Australian Department of Health has provided national guidance on prioritisation. Several allied health professions have been deemed high priority. These are: Speech pathologists, Respiratory physiotherapists, Sonographers, Diagnostic radiographers"

• RCSLT recommends transparent face masks to assist with communication access.
• Hello masks (transparent masks) are being developed in Switzerland to enable people to see the face of the person wearing the mask. 
• Clearmask is recommended by the NHS and RCSLT in the UK: https://buy.theclearmask.com/

• "To mask or not to mask" - research evidence from Eikenberry et al. (2020). 

"Our results suggest use of face masks by the general public is potentially of high value in curtailing community transmission and the burden of the pandemic. The community-wide benefits are likely to be greatest when face masks are used in conjunction with other non-pharmaceutical practices (such as social-distancing), and when adoption is nearly universal (nation-wide) and compliance is high." (Eikenberry et al., 2020, p. 293)

Research outputs for Research Groups in the CSU Faculty of Arts and Education

• Early Childhood Research Group: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/organisations/early-childhood-research-group in CRO and https://plu.mx/csu-au/g/early-childhood-research-group in PlumX 
• STEM Education Research Group: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/organisations/stem-education-research-group in CRO and https://plu.mx/csu-au/g/stem-education-research-group in PlumX 
• Libraries Research Group: http://csu.edu.au/libraries-research https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/organisations/libraries-research-group in CRO and https://plu.mx/csu-au/g/libraries-research-group in PlumX

Free access to recently published articles

The following articles have been published online this week - and the first two have 50 free online copies:

1. McLeod, S., Davis, E., Rohr, K., McGill, N., Miller, K., Roberts, A., Thornton, S., Ahio, N., & Ivory, N. (2020). Waiting for speech-language pathology services: A randomised controlled trial comparing therapy, advice and device. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(3), 372-386. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1731600
   Free access: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/F8ASRC26JS7BT8YJHUJV/full?target=10.1080/17549507.2020.1731600 
2. McGill, N., Crowe, K., & McLeod, S. (2020). “Many wasted months”: Stakeholders’ perspectives about waiting for speech-language pathology services. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(3), 313-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1747541
   Free access: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SUPJSPDNMSZKSIG3TNZE/full?target=10.1080/17549507.2020.1747541 
3. Cronin, A., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2020, in press May). Holistic communication assessment for young children with cleft palate using the ICF-CY. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Advance online publication https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_LSHSS-19-00122

Meetings with my team

Each week I have 1-2 hour meetings with my SLM team members. This week I've had inspiring meetings with:

• Holly McAllister and Suzanne Hopf about Holly's honours data
• Dr Michelle Brown about her postdoc progress
• Dr Sarah Verdon and Maree from Speech Pathology Australia about presenting an invited online workshop
• Nicole McGill about her PhD and publications
• Dr Kate Crowe about her publications
• Dr Van Tran about her PhD
• Dr Audrey Wang about our VietSpeech data analysis
• Kate Margetson about our VietSpeech study 2
• Dr Sarah Verdon about our VietSpeech journal articles
• Dr Tamara Cumming and Dr Nicola Ivory about our Early Childhood Research Group - followed by a meeting with our Dean Prof John McDonald and SubDean Research Philip Hider.
• Emails with lots of other team members

Additionally this week I have supported researchers across the university and world with their grant and promotion planning as part of my senior research fellowship.

Holly McAlister

Dr Michelle Brown

Dr Suzanne Hopf

Congratulations Kate - 50 journal articles published!

On June 24 Kate Crowe reached an impressive milestone: she had (co)authored 50 published peer-reviewed journal articles. It has been an honour to collaborate with her on paper number 50 - and a number of other papers as well.

• Most of her publications are listed here: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/persons/kcrowecsueduau
• My favourite title is "Are French fries a vegetable? Lexical typicality judgement differences in deaf and hearing learners"

We had an international celebration (Iceland-USA-Australia) to celebrate on 22nd July.

7am Rochester / 11am Iceland / 9pm Bathurst

Page proofs and copy edits

While away on holidays, I have had page proofs arrive from 4 articles (most with a 48-72 hour turn around) and copy edits for half of the chapters from Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children. It's difficult to take time off - but great that these papers will be available soon - and I've had lovely locations for these extra tasks.

1. Ireland, M., McLeod, S., Farquharson, K., & Crowe, K. (2020, in press June). Evaluating children in U.S. public schools with speech sound disorders: Considering federal and state laws, guidance, and research. Topics in Language Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000226 
2. McGill, N., McLeod, S., Ivory, N., Davis, E., & Rohr, K. (2020, in press May). Randomised controlled trial evaluating active versus passive waiting for speech-language pathology. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica. 
3. Crowe, K. & McLeod, S. (2020, in press May). Children’s English consonant acquisition in the United States: A review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-19-00168 
4. Cronin, A., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2020, in press May). Holistic communication assessment for young children with cleft palate using the ICF-CY. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. 

A holiday rainbow

Children’s rights in the time of COVID-19

Tonight I attended the webinar, “Children’s rights in the time of COVID-19," hosted by Child Rights Connect, Centre for Children's Rights at Queen’s University Belfast, University of Edinburgh, the Childhood & Youth Studies Research Group and World Vision International. The webinar took place via Zoom on Tuesday July 7 at 9AM in New York, 2PM in London, 3PM in Brussels... and 11PM in Sydney! It began with an inspiring statement by Nomundari from Mongolia - representing children across the world.

Family holidays

Holidays with family is important and this location is special.

Mentoring senior staff

As part of my CSU Senior Research Fellowship I have the honour of mentoring senior staff in the university. Topics include promotion applications, PhD completions, etc. I love it! Here is a photo from my meeting with A. Prof Branka Krivokapic-Skoko today.

Meeting 2 with A. Prof Branka Krivokapic-Skoko

I also have been working with senior colleagues in the UK including Prof Julie Marshall as her external mentor (https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2020/07/external-mentor-for-good-to-great-scheme.html)and Dr Jill Titterington regarding her fellowship application.

Multilingual Children's Speech page views in June 2020

The Multilingual Children's Speech website continues to be a resource for the world.
In June 2020 there were 4,857 page views (3,781 unique page views):

• Intelligibility in Context Scale was the most popular (1,869  page views)
• Speech acquisition page the next most popular (997 page views)
• Speech assessments page was next (577 page views)
• Speech Participation  and Activity Assessment  of Children (SPAA-C) the next (364 page views)

Some interesting images from the Google analytics reports are below:

FOAE: Beyond 2021

At today's Faculty of Arts and Education Forum Dean John McDonald outlined our new strategic plan for Beyond 2021: https://staff.csu.edu.au/manage-my-employment/sustainable-futures/faculty/arts-ed
We are to be "unified, agentic, enterprising".

Planning Early Childhood Voices - A virtual flipped pop-up conference

The Early Childhood Research Group are planning a virtual flipped pop-up conference titled "Early Childhood Voices". Many great ideas were discussed today.

Planning team - Tamara Cumming, Sharynne McLeod and Nicola Ivory

extIPA acknowlegments

extIPA stands for "Extensions to the IPA for the Transcription of Disordered Speech" and the current version is dated 2015 @ICPLA

This evening I was checking the most recent extIPA chart and found that I was mentioned in the acknowledgments for my suggestions regarding the revisions to the extIPA.
Ball, M. J., Howard, S. J., & Miller, K. (2018). Revisions to the extIPA chart. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 48(2), 155-164. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000147

External mentor for "Good to Great" scheme

Dr Julie Marshall is one of 20 people from Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) to be selected for the "Good to Great" scheme aimed to develop leadership skills, research collaborations, new skills and knowledge. I have been appointed as Julie's external mentor as part of the scheme. We had our first official meeting today, where we discussed Julie's alignment with the United Nations including her important work with UNHDR in Rwanda. Here is a paper that Julie and colleagues wrote in 2018 that I presented as part of my speech at COSP12 at the United Nations in 2019:

Marshall, J., & Barrett, H. (2018). Human rights of refugee-survivors of sexual and gender-based violence with communication disability. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 44-49. doi:10.1080/17549507.2017.1392608