Includmi – Person-centred care planning mobile app development for children with special needs

01 The Challenge

Our Client has extensive experience in education and domestic issues, serving as the Association of Directors of Children’s Services Lead for NHS Digital. David Paice has worked at the director level with more than a dozen local authorities and central government agencies.

Notably, he identified that sharing information about the child from family, friends, and teaching staff is clumsy and time-consuming. Many schools lack the confidence to support children with special needs, leading to placements in specialised, distant, and expensive schools. This not only burdens families but also increases costs for local authorities.

Thus, the project sought to provide tools for assessing and improving the mental health and wellbeing of young people, inspired by interactivity of popular social media platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp.

The project goal was to transform the process for resolving issues related to children with special educational needs, shifting it from a paper-based, often annual, face-to-face event to an online, instantly accessible platform with a social media-like format, available 24/7. The solution should have included:

• Social media – posting pictures and videos

• Courses – Learning management system

• Chats – communicating with peers, support, and teachers

This idea inspired Altamira team. However, we were tasked with balancing the app’s functionality and accessibility for children with special educational needs, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and maintaining usability similar to mainstream apps children enjoy.

02 The Solution

Altamira team worked doggedly to enable parents and teachers to quickly access quality-assured advice and guidance on supporting children and young people with special needs and disabilities. In our solution, we sought to facilitate faster and easier knowledge-sharing about children with SEND, using insights from family, friends, health professionals, and teaching staff.

Eventually, we delivered a cross-platform mobile app solution that places the child, young person, and their family at the heart of service provision, empowering them to live the life they want. Our mobile app enables timely, coordinated services planned in partnership with each child, young person, and their family. On top of it, our solution provides an inclusive vocational training management app to support stakeholders across local authorities working with SEND individuals aged 0-25.

For the app development, we used PHP (Yii2) for reliable and scalable back-end data handling, as well as Swift and Java/Kotlin for iOS and Android development.

Key features

• Wellbeing tracking: Children self-report on eight core elements of wellbeing, reinforcing independence and self-awareness.

• Social media-inspired interaction: Children share posts and updates with their support groups, creating a collaborative and engaging experience.

• Chats: Secure, consent-driven group chats facilitate real-time collaboration among teachers, parents, and health professionals.

• Real-time data dashboards: Local authorities and schools access real-time insights on children’s wellbeing, segmented by demographics, enabling data-driven decisions.

• Accessibility features: A dyslexia-friendly colour scheme and interfaces designed in collaboration with educators and psychologists.

• Notifications: The app displays and notifies about any suggested replies or actions.

Design

Our team meticulously planned the app’s design trying to ensure accessibility and inclusivity for children with special needs:

• User-friendly interface: Clean layouts and intuitive navigation allow users of all abilities to access features effortlessly.

• Customisable themes: Dyslexia-friendly colour schemes and adjustable font sizes cater to diverse user preferences and needs.

• Interactive elements: Social media-style features like photo and video sharing create a familiar and engaging experience for younger users.

• Wellbeing tracker visualisation: Simple, visually appealing graphs and progress trackers make it easy for children and their caregivers to monitor emotional and mental health.

• Secure communication framework: Clearly labelled and accessible chat interfaces prioritise privacy while maintaining usability.

Our team, in collaboration with educators and psychologists, ensured that the app design met accessibility standards and also resonated with the target audience.

03 The Result

As a result, the delivered Includmi app offers real-time data on key aspects of children and young people’s lives and allows schools and locality health and care stakeholders to interrogate data trends at different levels, for example, by age, sex, ethnicity, and over time. Additionally, the Includmi app takes a positive psychology approach and tracks key elements of wellbeing. Pupils can post information and chat with their support team. This person-centred approach gives SEND children and their families a strong voice in service delivery.

• Multidisciplinary teams collaborate seamlessly, improving response times and reducing administrative burdens.

• Real-time dashboards enable stakeholders to identify needs, optimise resources, and evaluate interventions.

• Early identification of needs reduces the demand for high-tariff specialist settings, saving local authorities significant resources.

• Children report increased satisfaction and engagement, while schools observe marked improvements in inclusivity and well-being metrics.

By transforming the Client’s vision into reality, Includmi solution proves that technology can lead meaningful change, promoting inclusion and wellbeing for children with special needs.

I was actually most impressed by Altamira’s ability to break the project down into clear epics and user stories. That clarity in terms of budget and what can I actually get for this budget, and what functionality…well, I thought that was quite interesting.

So I was most confident in breaking down the project plan and managing it in an Agile way, having some flexibility within a budget. This was an element helping to minimize the risks as much as possible.

David Paice, Owner