Support mental health research for children with language difficulties through project coordination, research delivery and stakeholder engagement.

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Poor risky decision making (RDM) may lead to negative consequences across various aspects of daily life, especially during adolescence. Developmental...

New to our HELLO Lab Presents Project? Take a look at our videos and references below! Click a thumbnail to watch the video, and follow the link underneath ...

After reading the Thriving Kids Advisory Group’s Final Report released 3 February 2026, as well as the Ministerial media release and press conference transcript from Minister Mark Butler and Professor...

State of play: On 7 November 2025, the Thriving Kids Advisory Group held the second of what will be three meetings to advise the Government on the design of Thriving Kids.  Zoom in: Among other thi…

At its core, Thriving Kids is an ambitious plan by the Federal Government to: divert children with mild and moderate autism and developmental delay from the NDIS early intervention pathway; and rep…

Almost always, children with developmental delays or disabilities need the support of more than one health professional. Health and education professionals should always work as a team with the fam…

Most children with a developmental language disorder (DLD) have persistent grammatical difficulties, and a considerable subgroup of these children also experience difficulties in their speech produ...

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is common. But - compared with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, ADHD, and learning disorders - DLD is still not well known. Back in 2020, we created a DL...

Back in the news: On 12 September 2025, Health Ministers released a communique, rekindling conversations about speech pathology regulation in Australia. Among other things, Health Ministers agreed to:...

In Australia, Speech Pathology Week starts today. It’s a good opportunity to explain who we help, who we are, our impact, big changes that will affect how we help and why we’re speech pathologists.

“Thriving Kids”, announced by Minister Mark Butler on 20 August 2025, is the snappy new name for Foundational Supports for children. But is it more than that? We don’t have a lot of details right n…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine how children from across the world draw themselves talking and to apply an interdisciplinary a...

We explored the development of expressive narrative using Peter and the Cat. We aimed to support clinicians to capture information about functional language use by providing a reference data set to...

On 30 July 2025, the Government published its report on the August 2024 ‘Consultation on Draft Lists of NDIS Supports’. The report is very late. The report and its timing may confuse some participa…

The Big Picture: On 29 June 2025, the influential Grattan Institute published a 108-page report with proposals to save the NDIS (link below). Many allied health providers were distracted by financi…

“Implementation [of reforms] does not stop with how our service delivery staff put that in a plan. Providers also have to know the consequences, know what to do, know what participants will come to…

Calm, measured, and constructive: my mantra as I sat down to read the Final Pricing Report: 2025 of the Independent Pricing Committee (IPC) (released on 11 June). I wanted to understand why things …

Browse the latest articles and research from International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

The big picture: The 2024-2025 Annual Pricing Review, released by the NDIA on 11 June 2025, is full of bad news for allied health providers and the participants we serve. Most commentary so far has…

The big picture: A recent Administrative Review Tribunal (Tribunal) decision in Sydney suggests that it’s getting harder for applicants to meet the disability access criteria to become an NDIS part…

This article addresses two crucial questions: what are the language demands of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and how can CBT be more accessible to people with language difficulties? These quest...

Many speech-language pathology (SLP) managers think that it’s their job to have all the answers. But that’s not what leadership is about.

John H. Flavell is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Flavell is a founder of social cognitive ...

It depends on what you mean by “registration”.  The debate:  Large disability providers continue to lobby for universal mandatory provider registration, arguing it will enhance participan…

Big Picture: Many allied health providers straddle and navigate three imperfect systems to support clients: health, education and disability. Ahead of the Federal Election, the Grattan Institute ha…

Drova has released its NDIS Provider Outlook report for 2025. The report looks at the sector as a whole. But it contains several sobering facts and helpful ideas for allied health NDIS providers lo…

High school students attending Flexible Learning Programmes (FLPs) experience more speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) than those in mainstream, which may impact their academic engagem...

To quote the NDIS Minister: “How many speech pathology sessions are best for… a child with a speech delay?”* The big picture: In Australia, the Federal government is setting up a new panel of technica...

Background An emerging body of literature explores the impact of living with developmental language disorder (DLD) on children, individuals and families. This work has identified a range of challeng...

The big picture: Functional communication is how someone actually uses language to communicate with others in the real world. It is often very different from how someone performs on a standardised lan...

The big picture: Most SLPs seek to add new services, projects, and workflows to improve the quality of their work for clients. But what if - instead - we asked ourselves: “What can I get rid of?” Why ...

The big picture: Too many senior SLPs in private practice get stuck offering too many types of services for too many populations of clients. This ignores the theory of comparative advantage, lowers ov...

The big picture: In the wake of 2024 reforms, thousands of now-former NDIS participants have lost access to the Scheme. Anecdotally, the NDIA’s revocation decisions continue apace in early 2025. Bu…

For lots of reasons, many SLPs are reluctant to ask for help when they need it. Some SLPs end up out of their depth, stressed out, and in trouble.

Happy new year, allied health NDIS providers!  After the wild lead up to the end of 2024, we hope you managed to get a break and to reset for what promises to be another eventful year. Media w…

Following confidential briefings, disability advocates say hundreds of thousands of people will be underserved by new eligibility rules that are reminiscent of failed Coalition policy.