Family based social network, ParentMail, has extended its reach through the creation of mobile and tablet enabled to help parents plan for school trips, clubs and parties.

As well as its online site, tablet and mobile sites have been developed to support the website as part of a £2m project undertaken by mobile technology company Answer.

A Cloud App for both iPhone and iPad has been released, as well as an online app that aims to help parents plan and track activities at schools, nurseries or clubs and enable communication between school and parent.

“As all parents know, it’s difficult keeping track of all the schools and club activities that children take part in alongside busy working lives. ParentMail’s success over the last ten years has been to streamline and simplify communication of all information in an easy to digest and manage format,” commented Paul Hughes, managing director at ParentMail.

“Answer Consulting opened our eyes and inspired us with what more we could deliver to schools and parents by implementing new web and mobile device technology. This made them the perfect match to overhaul ParentMail’s design, operation and structure so that we can expand our services beyond just schools, into nurseries and clubs. The Cloud-based software platform makes our offering scalable and resilient to drive future growth,” he added.

Steve Dobson, head of design and Innovation at Answer, explained: “The scale of the ParentMail project has taken 12 months of planning and project management, drawing on our pedigree of the design, development and testing of software solutions for web and mobile devices. ParentMail is an exciting concept that is growing in uptake by schools and families. A single account delivers all the information people need to keep in tune with their families school, sports and social lives – helping parents to be a little less frazzled.”