Creating a space for critically engaged conversations that extend and challenge our learnings is more pressing than ever given the unprecedented and wide ranging demands we face in our work with children, youth, families and communities. This conference attempts to engage with this complexity through such questions as: Can the current conceptual tools and language of child and youth care critically engage with the multiple and competing demands that practitioners, policymakers and researchers encounter in their everyday work?  What are the restrictions and exclusions of contemporary conversations in child and youth care?  How can we open up the field of child and youth care so it does not limit our horizons and restrict our imaginations?  How do we decide on the value and relevance of our work? What do we need to grasp the complexities we encounter in everyday practices?  Can child and youth care embrace the intricacies of embodiment and our everyday relationships with the non-human world?   What kinds of new languages and related practices can be mobilized in our work with children, families and communities?  How can we engage in a culture of critique in child and youth care and, simultaneously, work with children, youth and families experiencing difficulties?

Conference Strands

The 2011 conference planning committee invites proposals that engage with (but are not limited to) the following strands:
•  Child and youth care identities:  Professionalism and beyond
•  The intricacies and complexities of practice
•  Innovative strategies to working with children, youth, families and communities
•  Critical, postmodern, feminist, queer approaches to working with children, youth, families and communities
•  Postcolonial, decolonizing, Indigenous ways to working with children, youth, families and communities
•  Quantitative and qualitative methodologies to child and youth care research
•  Assessing quality in work with children, youth and families
•  Neoliberal demands of everyday work with children, youth, families and communities
•  Perspectives on bodies and embodiment in work with children, youth, and families.
•  Narrative approaches to child and youth care
•  Pedagogical encounters
•  Global perspectives in working with children, youth, families and communities
•  Community level practices