Community Guidelines

Why community contributions matter

Families know things no agency page will ever say: which office actually answers the phone, how long a wait really was, which form was the hard one. That knowledge belongs to other families too.

These guidelines exist so that knowledge stays trustworthy and safe to publish.

What we welcome

• Honest accounts of your own experience, including negative ones. (Public review posting is not open yet — for now these reach our editors rather than appearing on the site.)
• Corrections: a broken link, a moved office, a changed deadline, a program that no longer exists.
• Resources we are missing, especially local ones.
• Practical detail: what to bring, how long it took, what it cost, what surprised you.
• Organization and event information from the organization itself, clearly identified as such.

What is not allowed

• Fabrication: an account of a service you never used, invented statistics, or a made-up organization.
• Someone else's private information, including another family's or another child's health details.
• Harassment, threats, slurs, or content that demeans people with disabilities.
• Naming and attacking an individual staff member. Describe what happened, not who to punish.
• Medical advice, dosing, or telling another family to start or stop a treatment.
• Undisclosed commercial interest: promoting your own business or a client without saying so.
• Spam, bulk posting, affiliate links, or attempts to manipulate rankings.
• Impersonating a person, agency or organization.
• Anything unlawful.

Disclose a connection

If you work for, own, are paid by, or volunteer with an organization you are writing about, say so. Disclosed connections are usually fine to publish. Hidden ones are not.

A person reads it before it publishes

Nothing you submit appears on the site automatically. Every submission goes to a review queue where a person checks it against these guidelines, and against sources where a factual claim is involved.

We may publish it as-is, edit it lightly for clarity, length or accessibility, ask you a question, or decline it. We are not obligated to publish anything, and declining is not an accusation.

Your privacy when you contribute

• We never publish your email address.
• Only the display name you approve is shown. You may contribute without a name.
• Please do not include your child's full name, school, medical record numbers or address.
• Ask us and we will remove something you submitted.

If you are an organization that is listed

You can ask us to correct facts about your organization: services, coverage area, contact details, insurance accepted, eligibility. Send a source we can check and we will update it.

We do not remove accurate information because it is unflattering, and we would not remove an honest first-hand account on request. If something published here is factually wrong or breaks these guidelines, tell us what is wrong and we will look at it.

Enforcement

Depending on what happened we may edit, decline or remove content, ask for a correction, or limit or end access to contribution features. Repeated fabrication or harassment ends participation.

If you think we got a moderation decision wrong, email help@specialneeds.org and a person will look at it again.