"In what is an incredibly stressful time for families, especially those caring for children with special educational needs, I'm delighted that our product has been able to help in some way."
Richard Nurse, Founder of Picturepath
Picturepath was borne from local businessman Richard Nurse’s own experience with his autistic son Freddie. Richard noticed Freddie became severely distressed and anxious without a clear daily timeline and activity list that he could tick off throughout the day. Eighteen months ago Richard set about creating an app to solve this problem, working closely with local autistic families, special educational needs professionals and software developers to create and launch the product.
Since the school closures, the picturepath app has experienced a rapid spike in downloads and usage from parents adapting to homeschooling and life in lockdown. Thousands of parents and schools are now using the app to coordinate lessons and activities. Providing the required routine and order that reduces stress for their autistic children.
One parent, Julie 34 from Stockport commented “Caring for a child with severe autism is difficult at the best of time, but with the lockdown our ASD child's usual structure has gone out of the window and he’s been struggling massively. The app is helping, he can see his new routine in advance and interact with it - he’s less stressed, and so am I.”
Hearing similar messages from many of the app’s users, Richard made the decision to offer it for free for as long as schools are closed. Commenting “The feedback we’ve had over the past weeks has been immense, and something I could have only dreamt of when I started work on the app. In what is an incredibly stressful time for families, especially those caring for children with special educational needs, I’m delighted that our product has been able to help in some way.”
