Introduction
Parents are essential in fostering children’s language and literacy development. Health promotion and prevention interventions for language and literacy development are needed, however little is known about using social media for delivery. This study explored the impact of social media messaging about language and literacy development on parents' knowledge, skills and confidence.

Methods
A cross-sector partnership of Queensland speech pathologists collaboratively developed a suite of social media messages about strategies parents can use to foster their child’s language and literacy skills. A convergent mixed methods study design was utilised to collect qualitative and quantitative data, through surveys and social media analytics. Caregivers of children 0-5 years completed a pre- (n=136) and post-intervention survey following 12 weeks of social media posts on a newly established Facebook page.

Results
Pre-intervention survey results indicated participants regularly accessed information about child development from online sources, however only 31% used social media for information about communication. 66% of participants ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ social media is a helpful way to get information about communication, identifying it as a “convenient” way to receive “accessible information”. Other participants emphasised the importance of information that was “reliable” from “trustworthy” sources and identified not all social media provided this. After accessing Facebook posts, participants discussed helpfulness and credibility of these.

Conclusions
Results suggest social media is valuable in prevention interventions and public health campaigns, when parents are confident in the credibility of the information. Findings can inform speech pathologists’ use of social media to deliver universal communication messages.

Language
Facebook
Prevention
Social media
Parents

Families’ increasing engagement with technology demands speech pathologists reflect on historical modes of service delivery and respond by delivering support and information in new formats that are informed by community preferences. This research will investigate the use of Facebook to support families’ knowledge, skills and confidence related to language development.

Introduction: Literacy is becoming a core practice area for speech-language pathologists (SLP). SLPs are recognised as experts in communication, however recent research suggests many do not feel confident or prepared to work in the literacy domain. It is currently unknown how confident and prepared SLP students and new graduates are to work in literacy.

Aim(s): This study explored student and new graduate SLPs’ knowledge, skills, confidence, and preparedness to work in the literacy domain.

Methods: This study used an online cross-sectional survey comprising 31 questions, to explore participants’ knowledge, skill and pedagogy across five literacy areas, and their self-rated confidence and preparedness to work in the literacy domain.

Results: A total of 37 participants (n=5 SLP final year students, n=32 SLP graduates) from Australia (n=32) and New Zealand (n=5) were included. Participants scored highly across the three domains of knowledge, skill and pedagogy for the five literacy areas. Overall, participants reported feeling moderately confident to work in literacy. No significant relationship was found between participants’ final accuracy scores and their self-rated preparedness to work in the literacy domain. Many participants studied literacy as a small component of other related subjects (n=23), and some had not studied literacy at all (n=4).

Conclusions: Final year SLP students and new graduates in Australia and New Zealand appear to have high literacy knowledge, skill and pedagogy. Valuable insights were provided on how literacy knowledge and skills were obtained. Recommendations will be discussed, including the inclusion of literacy in the curriculum of speech pathology courses.

If Finland has 23 spelling patterns, Italian has 33, and English has well over 500, clearly there are huge differences in how easy and quickly children learn to read and write, and the cognitive load experienced by developing readers and writers. High cognitive load impacts Australian children across the years it takes to become skilled, confident readers and writers.

This makes effective cognitive processing, executive function and statistical learning skills extremely important, particularly given we start literacy instruction years younger than many nations, when cognitive processing skills are less developed; and children with communication weakness often have low working memory and cognitive processing skills.

This session explores research and theory on cognitive load, cognitive processing, executive function and statistical learning, and the impacts of acquired helplessness and success inoculation.

It then suggests practical applications for speech language pathologists working with pre-school and school children, including strategies for
• Reducing likelihood of children developing word-reading and spelling difficulties,
• Reducing cognitive load in tasks using reading and writing,
• Managing low working memory, and
• Building children’s metacognition about working memory, cognitive processing and executive function skills.

Knight, B. A., & Galletly, S. A. (2020). Practical school-level implications of cognitive processing and cognitive load. In A. M. Columbus (Ed.), Advances in psychology research (Vol. 140, pp. 1-90). Nova Science Publishers.

Knight, B. A., Galletly, S. A., & Gargett, P. S. (2017). Principles of reading instruction towards optimising reading instruction for at-risk readers in Prep to Year 3. Central Queensland University.

Introduction
Almost half of working-age Tasmanians are functionally illiterate. Practitioners and policymakers within education are focussed on improving outcomes. A 20-year collaboration between private practice speech pathologists at Speech Pathology Tasmania and educators in the independent school system has seen the relationship grow from associates to partners in the drive to improve language and literacy outcomes of children in Catholic Education.

Aim
To progress from assessment and intervention for children with Speech Sound Disorder/SSD at Tier 3 (Individualised) into a data-driven approach to early intervention in SSD, phonological processing, and language across Multi-Tiered Systems of Support/MTSS (Universal – Individualised). This aligns with the Speech Pathology Australia Speech Pathologists in Education Practice Guidelines (2022).

Methods
We describe a process of change management developing our experience and skills, transitioning to a new scope of practice. An MTSS approach was co-designed with our education colleagues. We identify the key components of this process that allowed our collaboration to succeed.

Results
Ongoing, responsive collaboration and provision of professional development to educators, has resulted in a shared vision to build capacity for robust Tier 1 intervention to students before they experience failure in their education.

Conclusions
This thriving model of service delivery represents a promising future for speech pathology and education collaboration in Tasmania. Such partnerships are critical for improving outcomes for our most vulnerable children. We conclude by presenting the possibilities and obstacles with education partners that can inform future change management plans.

Keywords: Education, collaboration, multi-tiered systems of support, language, literacy

Submission Statement: We reflected on models of speech pathology service delivery within education, our skills and the skills of our partners, and our shared aspirations. We respected the skills and experiences of our educator partners We responded by co-designing and implementing an evidence-based approach to classroom intervention through a MTSS model.

Introduction: Australian Early Development Census data indicates an increase in children in the ACT who are at-risk or developmentally vulnerable in language and communication. Approx. 80% of children attend early childhood education prior to starting school. Early childhood educators (ECEs) can, therefore, play an important role in facilitating oral language and emergent literacy skills, yet most report feeling ill-prepared and need further training and/or support from speech pathologists (SLPs).

Aim(s): to evaluate the inter-professional, co-delivery of the Australian adaptation of Read It Again – PreK!, designed for ECEs to embedded explicit instruction of oral language and emergent literacy skills.

Methods: a quasi-experimental design comparing environmental, educator and child level measures (pre-post) for Read It Again. ECEs received a one-off professional learning workshop introducing the program, followed by 16 weeks of co-delivery of storybook-based language and literacy learning objectives for the children. SLPs attended ECECs weekly, and ECEs observed the program’s interactive technique and scaffolding strategies. Educators implemented a second lesson each week. These lessons were observed by an SLP who provided feedback and coaching on ECEs implementation of the lesson plans and scaffolding strategies.

Results: Data collection will conclude in September 2022. Results will be reported for: centre level environmental changes, changes to educators’ instructional practices, and growth in children’s oral language and emergent literacy skills.

Conclusions: This novel approach with inter-professional co-delivery of lessons supported by feedback and coaching for ECEs has not been evaluated previously.

Keywords - preschool, language, literacy, inter-professional collaboration

Submission Statement: Respond: this research links directly to the theme of collaborating, engaging, advocating and partnering with professionals/community as it reports on findings from an inter-professional collaboration between SLPs and early childhood educators to reduce the risk of developmental vulnerability in ACT preschool-aged children.

Introduction: Children with reading difficulties are at elevated risk of mental health problems, both emotional and behavioural problems. However, little research has examined why this is the case. This is a critical gap, as identifying risk and protective factors could provide targets for intervention.

Aims: The child psychology literature indicates low self-esteem and bullying victimisation are linked with mental health problems. Reading difficulties are associated with both low self-esteem and bullying experiences. Therefore, we tested if self-esteem and bullying victimisation moderated associations between reading ability and mental health. We hypothesised that associations between poorer reading ability and mental health problems would be stronger among children with low self-esteem and children who had been bullied.

Method: We analysed baseline data from a longitudinal study of mental health over the transition from primary to high school. Year 6 students (n=208, 54% female, 35% with diagnosed dyslexia) completed a reading assessment and measures of self-esteem, bullying experiences, anxiety, depression, and behavioural problems.

Results: Poorer reading ability, self-esteem, and bullying victimisation were associated with all mental health outcomes. Additionally, bullying victimisation moderated associations between reading ability and both anxiety and depression. Specifically, poorer reading ability was only associated with anxiety and depression when bullying victimisation was high.

Conclusions: Future research should test if anti-bullying interventions can prevent development of emotional problems among children with reading difficulties. Findings also reinforce the importance of interdisciplinary approaches, and collaboration between parents, teachers, psychologists, and speech pathologists, to ensure a holistic approach to supporting children with reading difficulties.

Reading difficulties, mental health, self-esteem, bullying

Practitioners should reflect on the socio-emotional difficulties experienced by children with reading difficulties. Bullying prevention is a response that may improve mental health among struggling readers. A holistic approach to supporting children with reading difficulties will require respecting the different, yet complementary, expertise of parents, teachers, psychologists, and speech pathologists.

Title: Contribution of oral and written language skills to mental health in children with dyslexia

Introduction: Reading problems affect 10-15% of Australian children and emerging research has shown clear links between reduced literacy and long-term psychosocial problems including anxiety, depression, truancy, incarceration, and suicide. A possible explanation for these negative outcomes may be the co-occurrence of reading and language difficulties in dyslexia, and links between language problems and reduced mental health. Aim: We will present preliminary results of our investigation of the contribution of oral and written language skills to mental health in children with dyslexia. Method & Results: This project is funded by SPA (New Researcher Grant) and leverages data from an NHMRC funded project into reading and mental health. Data collection and analysis is ongoing at the time of abstract submission. We will present profiles of children with and without dyslexia (each n > 40) on oral and written language assessments and correlations between language and mental health outcomes in children with dyslexia. Already, we have found significant relationships between oral language and internalizing (r=.50, p=.016) and anxiety (r=.441, p=.035), and written expression and internalizing (r=-.426, p=.034) and anxiety (r=-.466, p=.025). Conclusions: This is the first study to explore the association between oral and written language and mental health in children with dyslexia. Targeting language skills, beyond reading, may assist clinicians to better respond to the psychosocial needs of young people with reading difficulties.

Keywords: dyslexia, mental health, language, literacy, reading

Submission Statement: Language and literacy skills are critical for psychosocial wellbeing. Children with dyslexia are at risk of mental health problems, yet the mechanism remains unclear. Oral and written language skills provide a possible explanation, which is explored in this research.

Disclosure Statement:
Mark Boyes is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (Investigator Grant 1173043).

The sharing of ancestral stories through pūrākau is an ancient tradition in Māori culture, used for thousands of years to share knowledge, convey traditional values and foster communication. While sometimes viewed under the umbrella of ‘myths and legends’, pūrākau, as a traditional form of Māori narrative, are central to the sharing of philosophy, knowledge, culture and worldviews (Lee, 2009). Engaging with shared stories draws heavily on oral language and listening comprehension, which are also important skills required for children to engage in the classroom and develop as a reader. Despite their cultural significance and potential impact for successful learning, little research is focused on the use of indigenous stories as a resource for early literacy development.

Sharing quality books with children and elaborating on interesting words is one evidence-based way to foster children’s vocabulary learning (Justice et al, 2005). Research in New Zealand English Medium classrooms has reinforced this knowledge, and shown significant benefits to children’s foundational literacy skills when quality book reading is incorporated into a classroom-based approach to literacy instruction (Gillon et al, 2019). This presentation will focus on the development of culturally relevant indigenous stories through co-construction with community, and the impact of this on the literacy and language development of 5-6 year old children. In a community case study approach, we will share the perceptions of indigenous leaders, teachers and families relating to the importance of culturally relevant literacy resources such as pūrākau, and quantitative on the literacy and language growth of children engaged with these resources during their first year of school.