What is Waypaths?

Inclusion infrastructure for understanding needs, mapping support and coordinating better-informed decisions.

Waypaths brings learner needs, current support, individual internal and external services, relevant evidence and practical constraints into one clearer structure for schools, trusts, local authorities, alternative provision and specialist services.

See how Waypaths works

Built around the real workflow

Supporting children and young people with additional needs often involves several organisations and many different pieces of information. Schools identify barriers and support already in place. Commissioners and trusts consider what is available. Providers describe individual services and supply evidence. Specialists contribute their insight. Decisions, responsibilities and review activity then need to stay connected over time.

Those steps are often managed across emails, documents, spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Waypaths is designed to make the reasoning chain easier to follow without replacing the people responsible for professional, statutory, safeguarding, procurement or commissioning decisions.

1. Structure what is known

Bring together needs, strengths, barriers, support requirements, preferences, current support and important unknowns. Information extracted from documents must be checked and confirmed by a person before it is used for matching.

2. Compare individual services

Compare internal and external services at service level, keeping eligibility, essential requirements, suitability, accessibility and practical feasibility visible as separate considerations rather than collapsing them into one unexplained score.

3. Keep decisions and review connected

Keep relevant service evidence, requests, responses, responsibilities, decisions and review activity connected to the support being considered or agreed. Waypaths supports the process; the responsible organisation keeps responsibility for its decisions.

What this can change in practice

For schools and trusts

A clearer way to understand needs and current support, compare relevant services, prepare requests and keep the reasoning behind decisions visible.

For local authorities

A more consistent picture of learner needs, available services, practical constraints, service evidence, support decisions and recurring gaps across participating workflows.

For alternative provision and specialists

A clearer way to describe distinct services, the needs and requirements they may support, their limits, practical access conditions and the evidence organisations need to review.

For families and learners

Where access and permissions allow, a clearer view of what information is being used, what has been agreed, who is responsible and what happens next.

Built from experience inside education

Waypaths is being developed by a team spanning education, inclusion, product, technology, service design and commercial adoption, with input from the organisations and people who work across SEND and alternative provision.