Call For Gov To Subsidies Childcare

Nearly 1,400 people have signed a petition asking the government to subsidise the cost of childcare.

Jessica Stanier, who started the petition, told us why.

"I just get more and more frustrated, more and more angry that I was seeing so many people around me resigning from their work and walking away from careers that they love.

They were basically pushed out of the working world because they've had a child."

Jessica, who has a 5-month-old daughter, has been quoted nearly £2,000 a month to put her baby in full-time childcare.

She says she had no idea about the cost before starting her family.

"When I was hit by these figures and seeing how booked up places where I found myself having conversations with different mothers and the same thing was said, they just didn't know a way to get back to work."

A UK report 'Careers After Babies' found that 85% of new mums leave the workforce after having their first child.

Jess says she had to question if it would be worth going back to work and what impacts being a stay-at-home parent would have on her career.

"Can I enter at the same area? Am I going to have the same salary? Is this going to make a bigger gap between me and my male counterparts or the other people who haven't left in the same space of time?

There are lots of things from a work point of view, as well as from the childcare responsibility and what's best for my child."

A report, published in June 2023 by the Council of Ministers , looking at population policy found that Jersey's fertility rate was 1.7. For a steady population the rate should be at least 2.1.

Assistant Chief Minister Deputy Lucy Stephenson acknowledged that there are local challenges which make it difficult to start a family.

"The cost of living - and we have one of the highest rates of working women anywhere in the world, so those things do play into that."

A similar call was made in the spring following the UK Chancellor's move to introduce 30 free hours for children over nine months.

But Education Minister Inna Gardiner said at the time that while she wouldn't 'rule out' extending free hours in Jersey, but the sector is under significant strain.

Jessica thinks the government needs to act now.

"It's not good enough to say it can't change because we don't have the space, okay lets make the space.

But in the meantime what's the entry to this we can offer and now! These are problems now, these are conversations that families are having today on whether to leave the island and the slower that we move, the more people that are going."

As the petition has already reached over 1,000 signatures, a Minister will be obliged to respond.

You can find the petition here.