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SEND stands for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, a complex system of support for children and adults who process, learn, or communicate differently.
💡Our Story
I’m building this as a parent of an autistic son and as someone who knows how vital trusted support is across the whole SEND journey. I’ve worked in data and AI governance, policy, and digital innovation for years but nothing prepared me for navigating the SEND system firsthand. It’s complex, emotionally exhausting, and unclear.
Too many families fall through the cracks. Too many professionals are stuck giving the same advice, with no time or tools to really help.
No one should have to face this system alone.
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🤖What Is Ella Support Loop?
Ella Support Loop is a smart, human-first support tool and ecosystem that gives calm, personalised guidance , grounded in verified information and emotional safety.
It’s like texting a well-informed friend who really understands.
You can see the demo of the system in action at the end of the you tube video
You can ask things like:
– “What happens after Year 11?”
– “How do I appeal an EHCP decision?”
– “Which local schools support speech and language needs?”
– “What can I do if my council missed an EHCP deadline?”
Ella responds with clear, relevant answers based on trusted sources like the SEND Code of Practice, IPSEA, and local charities, never guesses, never scrapes the web.
You can explore anonymously or log in to return to saved chats always staying in control. Ella never trains AI on your conversations or shares your data. We’re developing full anonymous mode, in the meantime, chats may be stored temporarily to improve answers, but they’re never linked to your identity.
You can also rate how helpful Ella was. This feeds into an anonymous feedback loop that helps improve her answers and gives councils and charities insight into where support is breaking down. We’re working with trusted local charities, councils, and families to ensure Ella stays grounded in what people actually need.
The Ella Support Loop Ecosystem
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💬Why It Matters
Behind every missed deadline or confusing policy document is a family in crisis. The SEND system is full of good people and good intentions but it’s fragmented, overstretched, and difficult to navigate.
The stakes are high but no one should have to fight through it alone.
Ella Support Loop isn’t just a product it’s a new kind of support ecosystem.
Ella brings clarity, calm, and dignity to the chaos, supporting families, individuals, and frontline workers. By reducing escalations and conflict, she saves significant time, effort, and emotional stress, ultimately helping both families and councils avoid costly tribunals and legal fees.
She helps people understand their rights, take confident steps forward, and access support more easily while giving local organisations deeper insight into what’s working and what's not which helps drive decisions on where resources are spent and prioritised.
This creates a mutual benefit, empowering both families, individuals and organisations to work together for mutually better outcomes.
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🔧What We’re Building Now
We’re launching the first version, our proof of concept, focused on two high-impact areas:
- Post-16 transitions
- EHCP guidance and timelines
We’re starting with these because they are consistently among the most difficult, time-sensitive, and emotionally charged moments in a young person’s SEND journey and the points where families often tell us they feel most alone.
This pilot is being co-created with families, individuals and frontline workers in a specific local area, with the aim of scaling up as we learn what works.
It will include:
- Secure login with private chat history
- Anonymous access mode (in development)
- Trusted content, simplified for clarity
- A feedback loop to help services improve, without tracking individuals
Our long-term vision is to extend Ella’s capabilities across the full SEND journey including early years, diagnosis pathways, supported living, benefits and housing and eventually to other public services too.
Ella is browser-based, works on any device, and will always be free to use. An app version may be developed in future.
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🌟Why Ella Support Loop Is Different
Ella Support Loop doesn’t replace people — she supports them.
💛 Born from lived experience, not theory. Every feature of Ella has been shaped and tested by real families navigating the complexities of the SEND system. This isn’t tech for tech’s sake. It’s support designed by those who’ve lived it.
Ella gives frontline workers time back by handling everyday questions with clarity so they can focus on the complex, human parts of their role.
She doesn’t replace council websites or chatbots either she complements them.
Ella turns dense policy documents and overwhelming PDFs into emotionally safe, step-by-step guidance.
And she doesn’t just answer. She listens.
🌀 The Insight Loop
Ella Support Loop helps councils and charities understand what families are struggling with and what needs to change, without ever storing personal data. With your consent, Ella uses anonymised trends in questions to improve support and guide partners in closing system gaps.
This makes Ella a valuable tool for families and frontline professionals. In real time, she helps:
- Spot patterns of unmet need
- Inform content, training, and service priorities
- Feed insights back into systems to reflect lived experience
🛡 Ella is governed by clear principles:
- Privacy
- Emotional safety
- Human-first design
- Lived experience as leadership
- Governance for change ->insights shared responsibly to improve services, not harvest data
Ella stores conversations securely only for users who choose to log in so they can return to saved chats. No data is ever shared. Users can delete their full history anytime. Anonymous mode is in development.
✨ She’s not built to sell. She’s built to support.
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.📊 Quick Comparison
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🚀What You Can Do
We’ve started the work. With your support, we can:
- Finalise and launch the first version
- Test it with families, individuals, and frontline workers
- Complete our governance and safety protocols
- Share anonymised insights with partners to help improve services
Our goal is £15,000. Every donation helps us move faster, reach more people, and build Ella the right way , with community trust at the core.
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❤️ What People Are Saying
“It shouldn’t be this hard to help. I just needed someone to guide me.”
– >Parent of a neurodivergent teen
“This could really help surface trusted local information especially for people who don’t know where to start.”
– > Local charity team lead
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Ella Support Loop FAQs
Q: Is Ella like ChatGPT or a chatbot?
No. Ella doesn’t guess, scrape the internet, or use generic data. Every answer is based on trusted, pre-reviewed content, not AI training models.
Q: Is Ella free to use?
Yes , always.
Q: Is it an app?
Not yet. Ella works in your browser and on any device. An app could come later.
Q: Will it work in my area?
Yes. Ella gives general SEND guidance everywhere. In this pilot, we’re focused on post-16 transitions but she will scale with local partners across the UK.
Q: Is my data safe?
Absolutely. Ella never shares your data, never trains AI on your chats, and lets you delete your history anytime.
Q: Is this replacing professionals?
No. Ella supports frontline workers by handling typical questions so they can focus on what matters most: people.
Q: What happens if she can’t answer?
Ella never guesses. She’ll show what’s available, suggest next steps, and flag gaps to help improve the system.
Q: Why are you starting with specific use cases instead of launching everything at once?
Because we want to do this properly. By focusing on one high-impact area at a time, we can make sure Ella is safe, effective, and genuinely helpful then scale responsibly with the right lessons, feedback and safeguards in place.
Q: Who keeps Ella’s information accurate?
Ella doesn’t curate or rewrite information. Instead, we use a governance framework where information owners such as trusted charities, partners, or public bodies are responsible for maintaining the accuracy and tagging of their own content.
Ella makes this information easier to access by structuring it clearly and safely. Where gaps are identified, we work with the original source owners to help address them.
Q: What’s your long-term vision?
To grow Ella into a national ecosystem of trust , expanding to more SEND use cases, then into other systems like housing, benefits, and health , always one step at a time, always grounded in lived experience, and always governed with care.
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Our Commitment to Your Privacy and Data Safety
At Ella Support Loop, we take your privacy seriously. Here’s how we ensure your data is handled securely and transparently:
1. Data Privacy and User Control
- No Personal Data Collected: At this stage, Ella Support Loop does not collect or store personal data. We are committed to not collecting any unnecessary personal information. If you choose to create a login in the future, you will have full control over your data, and we will be transparent about how it is used.
- Using Open-Source AI: Ella Support Loop uses open-source AI, powered by trusted, publicly available information. We gather and present data from curated, verified sources not from proprietary or private databases and we do not own the data we use.
- Data Anonymisation and Security: We do not collect or store personal data during your interactions. Any insights we gather are anonymised and used to improve the service and experience, not for training AI or sharing externally.
2. Transparent Governance Framework
- Data Governance: Although we do not collect personal data at this stage, we follow strong data governance procedures and are committed to GDPR compliance as we grow and evolve.
- Data Privacy Policy: We have a clear Data Privacy Policy that outlines how we handle any personal data in the future and how we will comply with all applicable privacy regulations. You can read our full policy soon.
- Governance Playbook: We have a comprehensive Governance Playbook that underpins our commitment to transparency, ethical practices, and privacy. This playbook guides the development and evolution of Ella Support Loop, ensuring that data is handled securely and users retain full control over their information. The core principles of our framework are seamlessly integrated into Ella’s design, systems architecture, and development processes. These principles are strictly adhered to during testing and implementation, safeguarding against any violation of our core policies.
3. Future Data Protection Measures
As we introduce new features, such as the option to log in and save chat histories, we will ensure clear privacy guidelines, including data deletion rights and secure storage practices to maintain the highest standards of privacy and security.
Why This Matters
We believe that privacy and emotional safety go hand-in-hand with trust. As a Community Interest Company (CIC), we’re not motivated by profit but by making a positive difference. We’re here to support families navigating the SEND system with a tool that values data safety, emotional security, and accountability.
Thank you for trusting Ella Support Loop.