EasyPeasy is a proven child development platform that offers parents activities and guidance to turn everyday parenting stresses into opportunities for playful learning. The coronavirus pandemic caused a period of exponential growth on our platform as over 15,000 UK parents sought out our app to help with home-schooling their children, and traditional early years providers reached out to us for support in making the transition to digital and blended learning. With the support of the Innovate UK 'Business led response' fund (Apr-Jun), we were able to provide free access for all parents to the platform during this time, and work with brand partners to generate bespoke content for families (incl Scouts, National Childbirth Trust, LEGO). We know that the impact of COVID-19 has been to increase inequalities in society. There is a need for ongoing support for families who may not have the skills or access to resources, to help give their young children the developmental play that will benefit them in the early years. Whilst providing free access to our platform allowed us to respond to need and mitigate growing inequalities, we must also consider our sustainability and growth as a business. A niche market for early child development and parenting apps, within which EasyPeasy has had a first mover advantage, is enjoying a significant uptake in interest and investment globally as a result of COVID-19\. As capital flows into the digital home learning space, we want to ensure that we can continue to play a lead role in meeting demand, whilst ensuring access and support to those the market does not automatically serve. Our vision is to combine purpose and profit, supporting a fair recovery from COVID-19 for all children, whilst building on the UK's position as a market leader in edtech within our early years home learning space. In this project, we will implement a sustainability strategy to bring the app to a new audience of affluent families with propensity to pay a monthly subscription, who will in turn subsidise ongoing free access to disadvantaged families through our 'Plus One' model.

EasyPeasy requests £46,867 in matched funding (£23k already secured) to support a 3-month content task-force to become the go-to early years app for parents and teachers during the COVID-19 crisis, and beyond. The home environment has a greater influence on children's early development than full time centre-based childcare. Despite this, home learning is an under-developed market and support is lacking for the 2.5 million parents with children aged 0-5 across the UK. Already existing developmental gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged children will widen as a result of lockdown with inequalities in home learning environment no longer mitigated by centre-based care. There is a significant need to provide support, guidance and encouragement to families to ensure they stay happy, healthy, and well, and to support children's ongoing learning and development throughout social distancing. At the same time, widespread school and nursery closures threaten the survival of the early years sector, and the need to support the ecosystem to innovate and adapt to distance learning is paramount. EasyPeasy is a child development platform that offers parents activities and guidance to turn everyday parenting stresses into opportunities for playful learning. It is the only digital platform of its kind with proven impact on both children's cognitive development and parents' wellbeing through Randomised Control Trial evaluation, with observable benefits to families across culture and socio-economic background in 10-18 weeks of use. EasyPeasy is a partner of the Department of Education, delivering proven impact through the government's Early Years Social Mobility Programme. As well as offering free access to EasyPeasy for parents and teachers across Q2 2020, through this project we will accelerate development of new functionality on our platform to support user-generated content, and work with nurseries, schools, and children's charities to adapt and digitise their programmes and curriculum so they can continue supporting their local communities, and work towards new and sustainable delivery models. Further support through the 'Extension for Impact' scheme will allow EasyPeasy to accelerate delivery of key product developments on Android, responding to user needs and allowing us to reach many more parents through increasing our offer on Google Play.