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From AllAboutSpecialNeeds

Welcome to AllAboutSpecialNeeds - a community-based website. If you are involved with special needs or disability - in whatever capacity (family member, carer, teacher, support worker, volunteer, charity organiser, etc.) - then our aim is that you might find some "useful stuff" here, or indeed contribute some "useful stuff", to help make your life, or somebody else's, a little easier.

Contents 1 What do we mean by "useful stuff"? 2 Edit existing entries and create new ones 3 Discussion 4 Community Forum

What do we mean by "useful stuff"?

Well - it could be anything from an entry telling other visitors to this website about a society or association such as the Downs Syndrome Association or the National Autistic Society, a local or national carers service, a relevant charity (e.g. a local respite care service), to an article about how to apply for Disability Living Allowance or a hotel or theme park with exceptional facilities for disabled guests. Basically anything that may help someone else whose life is impacted in someway by "special needs" or disability. If you can add personal experience, rather than just a straight-forward directory type entry (although that's fine too) - all the better. Just picture someone reading an entry and thinking "Wow, I wish I'd known about that before now!" and you're on the right lines.

The only thing we ask (our "editorial policy" if you like) is that entries be informative and NOT promotional or advertorial in nature. If they are then they will be removed or edited to make them acceptable.

Please also bear in mind that we are not about listing and detailing every syndrome, disease or disability that exists. There are already plenty of sites out there on the Web that cover these aspects in more detail than we could hope to match - but by all means link to these sites from your entries!

Edit existing entries and create new ones

We would encourage visitors to make contributions of their own "useful stuff" and so, with a few exceptions, most pages can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Those of you who are familiar with Wikipedia (a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia) will recognise that we have structured this site on that highly successful platform.

To add a new entry put your title into the box below, then click the button:

In every entry, links will guide you to associated entries, often with additional information. You are welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations, so long as you do so within AllAboutSpecialNeeds editing policies and to an appropriate standard. You needn't worry about accidentally damaging AllAboutSpecialNeeds when you add or improve entries, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the MediaWiki software this site uses is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because this is an on-going work to which in principle anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, inappropriate content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed. However, unlike a paper reference source, AllAboutSpecialNeeds can be constantly updated, with articles on topical events being created or updated within minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed resources.

Discussion

Every entry has its own discussion page (click on the discussion tab at the top of the page) where you can ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss corrections related to the entry. Once in the discussion area just click on the + tab to add a comment! You can sign your message by writing (~~~~). The wiki software turns them into the current time and your username or your current IP address if you are not logged in.

Community Forum

The Community Forum area allows for more general discussion about matters pertinent to the AllAboutSpecialNeeds community. For example you may wish to discuss the merits of mainstream over special schools (or vice versa) or simply post a question the answer to which you have not been able to find on this website or anywhere else!