SoundSmiles supports Aboriginal children’s ear health and social-emotional wellbeing — through an iPad app for children, and resources for the families, educators, and health workers who care for them.
Overview
Healthy ears. Strong children.
Aboriginal children experience ear infections and hearing difficulties at significantly higher rates than other children in Australia. Untreated, hearing difficulties can affect learning, language, and wellbeing.
SoundSmiles was developed through genuine co-design with Aboriginal communities, health workers, educators, and families — because solutions work best when they’re shaped by the people they serve.
The program combines ear health care with social-emotional learning, recognising that children flourish when they feel heard, strong, and connected to Country and community.
Our story
Born from listening. Shaped by community.
SoundSmiles began with a simple observation: too many Aboriginal children were living with untreated ear disease, and too few resources felt like they belonged to the communities they served.
Health workers, families, and researchers kept returning to the same idea — that lasting change starts with listening, not prescribing.
What grew from those conversations became a partnership between Ear Science Institute Australia, Monash University, and Curtin University, guided by the communities SoundSmiles is for.
The journey
From conversation to co-design.
The journey began with community consultation visits, listening sessions, and yarning circles across the regions SoundSmiles was designed to serve.
Each stage — research, prototyping, testing, refinement — was shaped in partnership with Aboriginal Health Workers, educators, families, and children, not handed down after the fact.
That process continues today through ongoing feedback, peer review, and continued relationships with the Aboriginal advisors and educator partners who help shape its voice.
Our Bilby
A familiar face. A gentle guide.
Bilby is the SoundSmiles mascot — big-eared, patient, and gentle. He guides children through learning about their ears, checking in on how they feel, and finishing each activity with pride.
Bilby’s look and story were developed in partnership with an Aboriginal artist and the communities SoundSmiles serves, so the character represents rather than borrows.
Children meet Bilby first in the classroom and again in every module that follows — a steady, familiar presence in a program built around them.