A software development company has been praised as “true experts” after creating an interactive platform to encourage families to introduce mentally healthy movements into daily routines.

Mental health charity Stormbreak, with the support of BBC Children in Need’s A Million and Me programme, officially launched the platform on August 1.

The coronavirus pandemic and ensuing closure of schools has meant that increased isolation for children and young people has amplified the need to teach mentally healthy coping skills from a young age.

To help provide the support, Talk Think Do, Stormbreak’s lead strategic and digital agency, quickly developed a strategy and a solution that would allow the charity to pivot its offering and host all of its support online.

It means children will be able to access the valuable programme from home, school or community spaces.

The solution also allows Stormbreak to scale at speed and reach new audiences.

The platform has been crafted with a user first approach, making it accessible, inclusive, visually engaging and a frictionless experience.

The playful characters represent the five mental well-being pillars – resilience, relationships, self-worth, self-care, hope and optimism.

There is also a reward mechanism, encouraging users to stay active.

Using progressive technology and working methods, Talk Think Do implemented a full DevOps approach and built the entire infrastructure using Pulumi – an open source platform for modern cloud architectures.

It is hosted in Microsoft Azure, with a custom-built API that links to a tracker for users to provide valuable feedback in a playful way.

The tracker enables the programme to adapt to the user needs and supports scientific research that is being carried out by Bournemouth University.

The platform means Stormbreak can continue to support children and bring families together to support mental health through movement.

Going through the stormbreak website, trusted adult networks will be able to sign up and get access to a wealth of video content to help support children with sustainable, transferable skills and coping strategies through mentally healthy movement.

Dr Martin Yelling, Stormbreak’s Founder and CEO, said: “We know that now is an important time to reach children and supporting their current and future mental health is timely.

“The team at Talk Think Do has been instrumental in helping us to adapt and improve our offering so that we can now reach children with impact on a wider scale, fast forwarding to our five-year mission.

“The team are true experts in their field and have worked tirelessly to deliver a world-class system, which will help us support mental health in young people for many years to come.”

Dan Meineck, CTO, Talk Think Do, pictured left, said: “As a trusted partner for Stormbreak, we are very proud to support such a worthy cause and are very excited to see this fabulous platform launch to the world.

“We have used some innovative new tech to host the limitless content, make future iterations quick and easy, track the engagement and have the ability to meet the increased demand for their service – future proofing the charity’s offering.

“We will continue to support Stormbreak moving forward with our strategy and technical expertise.”

Wimborne-based Talk Think Do was founded by Matt Hammond with 25 years’ experience in software development, working on high profile projects for world-renowned organisations.

Employed first as a developer and then as a solutions architect, his career spanned working for Barclays, Transport for London, the Department for Education, Fitness First, Avios and several Formula 1 teams.