“They wanted Funding Genie to work with us, not just for us.”  

The best SEND solutions are not built in isolation - they are shaped through partnership with the councils using them every day.

The partnership between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Imosphere shows what that can look like in practice. What began as work to strengthen consistency and confidence in SEND decision-making evolved into a wider collaboration focused on improving EHCP quality, strengthening evidence and shaping the future direction of SEND tools and AI-supported workflows.

By combining the borough’s SEND expertise with Imosphere’s product and technical capability, the partnership helped refine both practice and technology - creating approaches that were not only valuable locally, but could support other councils facing similar pressures.

At the heart of the relationship was trust and honesty, and a shared understanding that meaningful SEND improvement comes from combining strong practice, professional expertise and technology in the right way.

Combining expertise to improve practice

When Steph Baiardo, Head of SEND Review and Monitoring, joined the borough, the service had already implemented Funding Genie. However, it wasn’t working for them as well it could be. Steph was focused on strengthening accuracy, consistency, transparency, and shared understanding across SEND processes. Like many local authorities managing increasing complexity and demand, the borough wanted to strengthen how evidence, quality assurance and decision-making worked together in practice.

Rather than treating this as solely a technology challenge, the borough and Imosphere worked collaboratively. The borough brought SEND expertise, operational insight and a clear understanding of where pressures existed in practice. Imosphere brought product expertise, technical capability and experience from decades of working with local authorities across the country.

What mattered was how those perspectives worked together. As Steph explains:

From operational challenge to product evolution

Through ongoing collaboration, the partnership moved beyond improving Funding Genie and how it worked for just Kensington and Chelsea. It also helped shape how Imosphere’s SEND tools evolved more broadly.

By working closely with the borough, Imosphere gained deeper insight into the practical challenges SEND teams were facing around:

• EHCP quality and consistency  
• Access to clear supporting evidence  
• Justification of funding levels to schools and parents
• Quality assurance at scale  
• Annual review workload and capacity pressures  
• Maintaining professional judgement while improving efficiency

These insights directly informed the ongoing development of Imosphere’s SEND toolkit, including EHCP Genie and new AI-supported functionality within Funding Genie.

Rather than building features based on assumptions, development was grounded in real-world SEND workflows and shaped through continuous feedback from practitioners using the tools in practice.

This enabled Imosphere to move faster, prioritise the right problems, and develop solutions that reflected the operational realities local authorities face every day.

At the same time, the borough benefited from earlier access to evolving functionality and the opportunity to help shape how those tools worked in practice. This ensured that the tools would work for them, their teams, and their young people.

Strengthening quality, consistency and confidence

The partnership helped strengthen how evidence, decision-making, and quality assurance connected across the SEND process - improving consistency, transparency, and confidence across the system.

Alongside ongoing refinement of calculations, descriptors, and workflows, the work focused on creating clearer links between need, evidence, and funding decisions, while supporting practitioners managing increasing volume and complexity.

The impact of the work undertaken by Kensington and Chelsea has been significant:

• Projected deficit significantly reduced: £26 million to projected under £5 million
• More consistent decisions: Clearer link between need, evidence and funding  
• Greater transparency with schools: Decisions easier to explain and defend  
• Stronger confidence across the system: Fewer challenges driven by inconsistency

As Steph explains:

For both the borough and Imosphere, the work reinforced an important principle: meaningful SEND improvement comes from combining strong practice, professional expertise, and technology in the right way.

Shaping what comes next

Today, Kensington and Chelsea continue to work with Imosphere as part of a wider community of local authorities helping shape the future direction of SEND tools and AI-supported workflows.

This includes ongoing collaboration around EHCP Genie, annual reviews, quality assurance, and how AI can support SEND teams under increasing pressure - while still protecting professional judgement and maintaining quality.

For Imosphere, this collaborative approach remains central to product development: working directly with local authorities, refining tools through real-world feedback, and building solutions around operational reality rather than assumptions.

Because the best SEND solutions are not simply delivered to councils - they are shaped with them.