Can see what Riven is saying. There are already so many boards for different audiences and purposes.
It does mean that people who find Amber's insights into their children useful would have to seek here out more if she wasn't on SN at all...but I still don't get what the problem is with the tearoom thread Amber set up before she left...unless I'm being really stupid.
I am and on mrsturnip's behalf that she has been made to feel shit for posting reasonable and measured opinions. OP, you have been reasonable and whatever on here, to be fair, but I do think it's ironic that the only people who've actually been overtly unpleasant in all this were you (to me, on the second thread) and then these people slagging of MrsT. Do we not have to be nice to people without Aspergers then? I think that there are some people with double standards here and I'm pissed off on MrsT's behalf that she's been made to feel like she doesn't know her son .
And that sums up the nature of a talk board. It's not always nice. That's human nature. If there's going to be a nice tearoom board for any MN user away from the normal hustle and bustle, I'm OK with that, personally, as long as it means that the other boards can fulfil their purposes and give people a place they can go to speak freely.
mary, you said "it is discriminatory NOT to make reasonable adjustments for even ONE person who has a disability". I am someone who argues for rights for disabled people day in and day out, but there are limits, unfortunately. e.g. Alton Towers and places have made most of their rides wheelchair friendly, but there are a few which aren't. Do you tear those ones down, or do you say 'there are lots to choose from - sorry that you can't go on them all - but we've tried and tried and can't make them more accessible than they are'? Nothing can be made perfect and Amber herself has said she's asking for improvements, not perfection.
Until one poem caused a heated debate, I don't remember Amber asking for a separate area or anything. Nobody is saying 'Amber, you can't come on here'; nobody is saying 'nobody cares'. People are just saying that there are limits to what can be done, on a talk board, about emotive subjects.
I am happy with this tearoom thread/ board idea if that's what people need. I don't see a problem with adding something into a general MN structure if it helps. I just don't want to see the current SN board split into 'safe' and 'non-safe' as, by its very nature, that would be controversial in itself and remove the whole idea of support for parents of kids with SN.
For me, it comes back to audience and purpose: it's a board for parents of kids with SN, and reality ain't always pretty. There will be, at times, some things that parents of kids with SN will take differently than someone with that disability, and I don't see any way round that on the SN board.
But an extra board sounds like a plan and has a totally different audience and purpose to it. So will hopefully work.