Early Years SA Application: A one-stop-shop for early childhood support

Key Challenges

The Department for Education sought to harness innovative technologies to enhance accessibility and availability of important developmental information for parents and carers of children aged 0 to 5 years old. A key objective was to assist in reducing the number of South Australian children beginning primary school as ‘developmentally vulnerable’ across one or more developmental domains as per the Australian Early Development Census data capture. Providing parents and carers with readily accessible parenting information helps ensure that they are aware of upcoming health and development checks. This includes immunisations, dental checks, preschool and school enrolment reminders. These alerts remove the pressure to remember key milestones and schedules, whilst providing practical tips and activities. This enables families to provide the very best environment for their children to thrive.

Solution

Chamonix designed and developed a new mobile application with a clear mission: to assist in increasing the number of SA children who are developmentally “on track” when they start primary school.

Our innovative solution, the Early Years SA App, is designed to empower parents and carers by providing readily accessible information, ensuring they are aware of upcoming health and development checks, ultimately optimising the health, well-being, learning and development of their children.

Chamonix partnered with the SA Government to achieve several critical objectives, including enhancing parental awareness of developmental milestones at different ages and stages, promoting timely child health development checks and immunisations, and equipping parents to actively support their child’s development.  The Early Years SA App has been designed to provide holistic support services and resources to help parents and carers in their parenting journey, so their children can thrive. The app contains resources and contacts that can support relationship building, mental health and safety and injury prevention, whilst also providing important health appointment and immunisation reminders.

The development process included storyboarding, user stories, wireframes, and a high-fidelity prototype, supported by thorough design and installation documentation. Chamonix experts ensured seamless integration with Department-owned Azure DevOps and Azure accounts, and compliance with the Whole of Government Web Application Security Standards, guaranteeing the highest levels of data security and user experience. The Early Years SA App is also built to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines where possible.

The partnership culminated in a fully functional mobile application, now accessible through both the Apple App Store Connect and the Google Play Store, with built-in data collection functions to support ongoing evaluation and improvement.

Business Benefits

• Providing automated, age-specific notifications for families to remind them about child health and development checks, immunisations, dental checks and preschool and school enrolment.
• Providing easier access to information about resources and services available to South Australian families, such as Child and Family Health Service (CaFHS), Parenting SA resources, learning and play activities, family wellbeing, and mental health services.
• Give parents and families practical tips and strategies to engage with children, including information on sleep, nutrition, and family life and care.
• Assist in increasing the number of SA children who are developmentally “on track” when they start primary school.

Solutions & Services

• Azure (Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Application Insights, Functions, Storage Accounts, API Management (APIM))
• Azure DevOps (Automated CI/CD)
• Ionic/Angular/Capacitor iOS and Android application