Forum 1: Children's Health and Social Services

This Forum will address the need to balance our considerations of child development by stressing the contributions of recent advances in health and social/community services to children's development overall. Issues such as hunger, nutrition and obesity, ethical issues in relation to health services, HIV/AIDS, mental and physical health and health education, community development in diverse ways, will be developed. The findings from current research will be highlighted and implications will be drawn for the delivery of early childhood services. Papers presented in this Forum will be grouped in complementary strands.

Forum 2: Indigenous Children's Needs and Services

This Forum will examine the rights of children and their need for appropriate health, welfare and children's services. An holistic approach would take into account the many childhoods and the differing circumstances in which the children of this world live. Remoteness, cultural and family contexts also influence the kinds of services needed and questions might be raised as to the suitability of wholesale adoption of Western values, styles and processes as indicators of universal service delivery. Papers presented will be grouped in complementary strands.

Forum 3: Innovation in Service Delivery

This Forum will address the quality of and access to early childhood education and care for children across the world. The Forum will include a number of strands such as: professional education and training, the integration of services, services for children in atypical circumstances (for example home-tutoring, hospitals, remote locations etc.), the use of new technologies, new curricula, staffing matters and resources across the different services, recent research and so on. Papers presented will be grouped in complementary strands.

Forum 4: Children in Difficult Circumstances

Throughout the world young children face difficult circumstances daily that are extreme in their diversity and situation. We find children in situations such as detention centres, in child labour and poverty, who are homeless, who have been severely affected by wars and other turmoil, who have been abused one way or other, who are homeless. These are only some of the acknowledged difficult circumstances in which children live and survive. This Forum will investigate a number of issues and the presentation of papers on this broad but important topic is welcome.