Please make sure you review and understand the Terms and Conditions below.
The content of this website (including information, advice, materials and publications) and any correspondence you may receive from any persons associated with the Office of ECE is provided ‘as is’, and we accept no liability for its accuracy. Before using or relying on anything you read or see on this site, or that we say or write to you (including in newsletters), we strongly advise you to seek independent personal/financial/legal advice specific to your situation.
1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF GENERAL TERMS
Access to, use of, and/or linking to www.oece.nz (and the former www.childforum.com) “the Site” constitutes your agreement to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. The Terms and Conditions include our Privacy Policy. These Terms and Conditions (including the privacy policy) apply to all users of the Site, and this includes visitors, members, and non-members.
We reserve the right to amend these terms and conditions at any time. You are deemed to be aware of and bound by the amendments to the terms upon publication on the Site.
You accept that if we consider you have breached any of the Terms and Conditions as stated here, we may immediately and without written notice to you, suspend or terminate your access to the Site. On suspension or termination, you must immediately cease using the Site and any materials and information you may have obtained from it, and any communications including newsletters that we may have sent to you, or your service or organisation.
2. OWNERSHIP OF CONTENT ON THE SITE AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
All content on the Site, is protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws unless expressly indicated otherwise on the page on which the content is published.
You may browse the public area of the Site for your own personal use, information, research, study, teaching and educational purposes only.
Members and subscribers may view and use for personal/professional non-commercial purposes only, content located within the area of the Site applicable to their membership or subscription.
Accredited members of the media are welcome to cite any content provided in the public area of the Site provided that the source (The Office of Early Childhood Education) is appropriately and correctly acknowledged, with the URL link.
If you wish to syndicate or use any content or materials of the Site in other way please contact us. Your request will need to be in writing.
3. MEMBERSHIPS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
A) Member Responsibility
The Site requires users to provide their real name for an Educator membership, the ECE service name/s and licence number/s for a Service Provider membership, or the name of the organisation or library for a Research User subscription.
In taking out a membership or subscription you agree that you will not share or transfer your membership with another person, group, or organisation. You also agree not to share your password or let anyone else have access to your membership.
To help to keep your membership account secure we recommend you change your password at least every six months. You must quickly contact us if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your membership/subscription or your login details. You must not permit your login details to be used by or transferred to any other person.
We take seriously the protection of membership benefits, as we expect you to do too. You accept as a member that you have responsibility to inform us of any misuse of membership that comes to your attention, including membership-only information being shared with third parties and breaches in copyright.
B) Membership Criteria and Prohibited Users/ Members
We reserve the right not to approve the membership application of any person or ECE service, without explanation. We also reserve the right to decline the membership of any person employed by or associated with a political group or competitor. Membership services are not available to persons and ECE services in or associated with the Early Childhood Council business lobby (ECC). If your association or involvement with the ECC is not disclosed to us, we reserve the right to cancel membership immediately or at any time, without notice, and no refund will be due.
C) Membership Duration and Renewal
Membership commences on the day that it is activated and ends when you have cancelled your account or have requested cancellation. Should an account not be cancelled, then membership fees continue to be payable and we reserve the right to pursue this debt if it remains unpaid. Password access to the applicable member or subscription area of the Site will be suspended if the renewal fee has not been paid by the date that the membership or subscription runs to.
Should an ECE service provider sell or merge their service/services with another service provider, the member accepts responsibility to immediately inform us and request cancellation of membership. The new owner or operating group must take out a new membership under its name.
D) Fees, Refunds & Conditions
Membership fees and subscriptions paid are non-refundable. Should a member wish to cancel membership before expiry date for whatever reason, no refund is payable.
Should your application for membership or subscription not be accepted for whatever reason, any money paid in application for the membership shall be refunded less 10% administration fee or credit card processing fee, whichever is the highest amount. We reserve the right to accept or not accept any membership application. At any time, following termination you must not attempt to become a Registered User without our prior written consent. If you do attempt to join without written prior consent, any fee paid will be refunded less 50%.
Any person/s, service, or organisation who has threatened, undermined, or caused damage in any way to us will lose their access to membership and no refund will be due.
Where a member passes on information (verbally, electronically, in writing, or printed copies) from the member-only or subscription area of the Site to any other person or organisation or shares it in any way including on social media, we reserve the right to cancel the member’s or subscriber’s access without notice, to name and shame, and refuse any future applications for membership or subscription.
E) Credit Cards
Credit/debit cards are processed securely via the STRIPE Site. Credit card details will not be available to any OECE staff member. Users credit card details are not stored on our website (OECE). There is a token which then links into the Stripe site. Credit Card details may be stored by Stripe. Please visit https://stripe.com/nz for further information.
F) Online Access and Access to Member-Only Articles, Resources and Benefits
You agree that from time to time we may remove access or partial access for indefinite periods of time or cancel your access and membership at any time, without notice to you.
We reserve the right to modify, change or discontinue what we offer to you as a member and without notice. This includes the right to withdraw access to a membership benefit/s or changing the benefit/s provided to you.
At present a member benefit for Educator members and Service Providers is open access to NZIRECE journal articles and we reserve the right to discontinue or limit this access at any time.
We do not guarantee that your use of our service and/ or access to our website or to any content on it, will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free.
Being online, access is available 24/7 but we cannot guarantee that the website will not go down at any time, that it will not be hacked, or that a server may go down either through human error or an act of God.
Under our Terms and Conditions, you expressly agree that your use of, or inability to use, the website and access any materials or OECE service is at your sole risk
4. CORRECTIONS AND COMPLAINTS
The OECE is not a news media website. Our stories may include opinion and views.
While we make every attempt to ensure that no content on the Site is offensive, abusive, libellous, obscene, incorrect, or false – we are only human and may miss something.
You will contact us immediately and tell us should you see, read, or find anything on the Site that is offensive, abusive, libellous, obscene, incorrect, or false. By notifying us immediately, we will be able to take timely action and avoid or reduce any potential for harm. Please use the Contact Us form on the Site or email us directly. Sometimes electronic mail can get caught up in Spam or may not be received by us, so should there be no response or change within 72 hours of emailing your notice of correction or complaint, please try emailing again or send to our postal address: The OECE, PO Box 58-078, Porirua 5245, NZ.
Information, statements or material that is the reported experience of a person/s, group/s, or party/parties will not be removed from the site unless sufficient and strong reason is provided by the complainant. Information, statements or material that is in the public interest to know will not be removed from the site. Should you disagree or dispute our decision, we reserve the right to seek mediation by a third independent party. The cost of the mediator’s fees will be equally shared between both parties.
5. INDEMNITY AND DISCLAIMER
No liability is accepted for the completeness and accuracy of any statement/s, articles, advice, information, and published materials on the Site or communicated to you via email, including newsletters. We do not give any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness of the Site content and communications. Independent and/or legal advice should be sought before taking any action in reliance of any information, advice, or resources provided.
Where the Site and/or our newsletters contain third party advertisements and/or information, materials and documents relating to or provided by third parties, we do not recommend or endorse the products or services of those third parties. Any offers made by third parties are not made by the OECE or by anyone in our team, and the third party is solely responsible to you for the quality and delivery of any goods or services you access from the third party.
You indemnify and hold the Office of ECE, our team members, and independent advisors harmless and keep us indemnified from and against all loss, actions, proceedings, costs, expenses (including legal fees), claims and damages incurred or suffered from your access to and/or use of the Site and any associated correspondences including newsletters.
6. EVENTS
We reserve the right to cancel any event and all fees will be refunded. We accept no responsibility for other costs (e.g., travel, accommodation bookings) incurred by the registrant. No refunds will be given if a registrant for whatever reason, is unable to attend the event booked.
The registrant may choose to give his/her place to someone else from his/her organisation or service; and this will be accepted if the registrant informs us before the day of the event as to who will be his/her replacement.
We reserve the right to change the venue. If this is necessary, we will undertake to email all registrants of the change of venue at least one week prior to the event date. In extraordinary circumstances, such as flooding and fire at the venue, advance notification of a change of venue may not be possible.
7. OBLIGATIONS
You may access the Site through a standard web browser. You must not access the Site using any other method, including: deep-linking, data mining, use of a robot or spider, or any similar data gathering, extraction or other monitoring method.
8. LINKS TO, OR WITH, THIRD PARTY WEBSITES
No responsibility is taken by us for the contents of links in the Site to other websites. Hyperlinks are provided to you as convenience only. You link to any such linked website entirely at your own risk. We do not provide any guarantees or representations as to the content and reliability of any such linked website. We will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by you from accessing, using, relying on, or trading with third parties.
LAST UPDATED – These Terms and Conditions were last updated 9 August 2021.
