Some councils hesitate to adopt new funding tools because they have already invested significant time and expertise in developing a banding framework that works for them.

The criteria reflects local knowledge. The thresholds make sense to practitioners, families and commissioners.

Because of that investment, adopting new digital tools can sometimes feel like a major change – particularly if it means replacing something that already works.

But once a banding decision is made, it typically gets recorded against an individual child and the data stays there. There's no easy way to look across your cohort, understand patterns of need, or see where the similarities and differences are.

As a result, the insight needed for confident planning and decision-making often remains hidden.

Two ways to achieve consistent, evidenced banding

There are two routes into consistent, evidenced banding with Funding Genie. You can use Imosphere's proven assessment form and algorithm, already in use across local authorities, with structured needs profiling and the ability to benchmark your cohort against others working from the same framework. Or you can use the banding framework your council already relies on.

We simply translate your criteria, bands, and funding values into a digital workflow, so the same logic is applied consistently every time.

Both routes give you the same foundation: consistent decisions and a clear, auditable picture of your cohort that a manual process can't produce.

Your existing framework – digitised and applied consistently

A practitioner answers your questions digitally and gets a banded output built on your logic, applied consistently every time.

AI is included as standard: it reads the uploaded EHCP, suggests answers to the questions and gives practitioners a structured starting point rather than a blank page. Once the needs profile is complete, a rationale report is produced automatically, giving you the evidence to explain and stand behind every decision.

You stay in control of what gets finalised. The AI handles the reading and summarising, and professional judgement always stays with you and your team.

Because every decision is recorded in the same place, you start to accumulate something that a manual process never produces: a real picture of your cohort, one you can interrogate, share across your local authority, and act on.

What this means in practice

Decisions are more consistent and easier to explain. Practitioners spend less time working through documentation and more on the cases themselves. Families and schools receive clear explanations of how banding decisions were reached, backed by a rationale report that shows the evidence behind them.

Across your cohort, the picture that was previously invisible becomes clear.  

You can see:

• How your children and young people are distributed across need
• Where pressure is building
• Which cases may need closer attention as reform progresses

That's what turns good individual decisions into confident, system-wide planning.

SEND Reform: Getting ahead of it

SEND Reform proposals suggest that at transition points, some children currently with EHCPs may move to Individual Support Plans (ISPs).

Identifying those children early and giving families and schools time to understand what that might mean for them is only possible if you already have a clear view of your cohort. Getting that picture in place now means those conversations can happen in a planned, thoughtful way rather than under pressure.

Councils that have consistent, evidenced banding decisions captured digitally are better placed to navigate that shift. Funding Genie provides that foundation, built from decisions you're already making, but captured in a way that supports better oversight and planning.

See how it would work for your local authority

If you would like to explore how Funding Genie would work with your existing banding framework, we're happy to walk through it with you.

FAQs

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