Autism Resources Network Launches New Website

PHOENIX - May 1, 2018 - PRLog -- On the closing day of Autism Awareness Month, the Autism Resources Mentoring and Services Network announced via social media that their autism resources website is now operating in BETA mode. Registration is free to all members including consumers and businesses, providing a way for families and caregivers to find qualified providers based on location, service type, and customer reviews.

Sporting the slogan 'by parents, for parents' the website promises to fill a void in the autism community by enabling users to publish honest reviews and commentary to inform the public of their personal experience with a wide variety of autism service providers including therapists, private schools, recreation venues, medical specialists, and more. What makes the website unique as compared to other review platforms such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google Reviews is the ability of the reviewer to register an anonymous user name at registration.

The Frequently Asked Questions page of the website states, "We understand that negative reviews of businesses in the Autism community can cause backlash among peers and service providers to our children and loved ones. And because we want every member to feel free to express and document their experiences for the benefit of others, good and bad,  we have made this anonymous review feature available as part of your FREE registration."

In addition to the autism resource directory section, the website is also home to a public autism community forum divided by states, services, diagnostic and symptom categories, where comments can be searched and viewed indefinitely. "We wanted to have a public forum because as a parent who is a member of several social media support groups, it becomes nearly impossible to navigate the posts. You see people posting the same questions over and over again, 'looking for a pediatrician' or 'looking for nutrition advice' and then a week later another person may post the very same question. What follows is people answering the question all over again or, even worse, nobody answers at all because that question was just posted a week prior. So we wanted to create a permanent forum space where everyone in the nationwide autism community could explore questions and answers beyond the confined space of a local support group page."

Complimenting the entire scope of the Autism Resources Network website, including the reviews section, state information pages, website pages, blog posts, and forum, is a universal glossary of autism terms. "One thing we noticed as parents navigating services online is there are many acronyms associated with special needs services. It can take folks quite a while to learn all these terms like IEP, SPED, ABA, OT, PT, terms that you would not be familiar with if you weren't in the special needs community. So we included a built-in glossary, or autism dictionary, which gives an overview of some of these terms when highlighted."

In honor of the soft launch of their website, the Autism Resources Mentoring and Services Network published a 'coming soon' video to their YouTube channel.

For more information, please visit the Autism Resources Mentoring and Services website at http://www.autismresources.network.