Early years compliance platform Get Otii has been awarded an Innovate UK Women in Innovation grant to develop a digital SEND tool for nurseries.

The Inclusion Hub aims to join up the nursery, the parent and the professionals around a child into a single record, as early years settings prepare for updated Ofsted inclusion standards from September.

The grant funds a research and development phase, testing whether a shared digital record can replace the way a child’s SEND information is currently spread over printouts, separate systems and even the memory of those working with the child. The project will also test what agentic AI, meaning software that can carry out a sequence of steps on its own, could safely take off a practitioner’s hands, and where it should not be used.

The project is funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation. Winners receive a grant of up to £75,000 plus 12 months of bespoke business support, training and networking.

Maggie Bolger, founder and chief executive of Get Otii, said the updated Ofsted standards and supporting guidance are “genuinely good.” “The problem is…the observations sit in one system, the notes in another, and the parent conversation stays in somebody’s head,” she added. “By the time the local authority, the health visitor or the school the child moves on to needs the whole picture, it sits in six places and none of them agree.”

She added: “We are testing whether one simple workflow can join up the nursery, the parent and the professionals, so everyone is singing off the same hymn sheet and the picture we build follows the child instead of starting again.”