'Jersey isn't as family-friendly as it should be'

Mrs Jauncey moved to Jersey with her husband who was born and raised there.

She said some aspects of bringing up her children on the island were "really great", such as how safe it was and the system of state-supported private schools.

However, she added: "Families and individuals with children are really not prioritised in Jersey culture".

"There's a work culture that is unfairly weighted on the side of the employer... and the fact that our culture as an island is very much directed towards the elderly who have a large amount of the voting power."

She said the island was "focused on the people who are shouting the loudest", adding that often older people were the ones with the time and energy to do so.

Mrs Jauncey said, despite a push to get women in particular back into the workforce, there was a "lack of support for parents with children under five" made worse by a "lack of affordable childcare".

A report prepared for the government in 2024 found average childcare fees in Jersey were almost 50% higher than in England, while a survey of parents found 95% of those asked thought childcare was too expensive.

The government has announced plans to introduce an additional 15 free hours of nursery care per week for two-year-olds, but there has been concern from parents and nursery staff that it will not be enough.

Family campaigner and mother-of-three Denise Heavey said her own experience of paying nursery fees was "financially crippling".

"Some months we were paying £2,200 and that was my salary swallowed up," she said.

She kept working while her children were young but said a lot of parents were "forced out of the workplace because of the high cost of nursery care".

To remedy this, she said the government needed to think about greater financial support for parents, particularly when returning to work after parental leave.

She added that businesses should also work harder to implement family-friendly policies, such as flexible working arrangements.

Mrs Jauncey has also called for greater statutory rights for working parents, including specific days outside annual leave to look after sick children.

Outside government, a number of charities and individuals have stepped in to provide support.

Mrs Heavey, for example, has recently launched MentorHood, a community network offering support groups, workshops and meet ups to parents and caregivers in Jersey.

She has set up the group with another mother, Alice Vincenti, to build parents' confidence and help them be "better performers at work and and be more present parents at home".

However, she said it was "incredibly frustrating as a parent" that they were having to provide information and help to their peers when the government could make it readily available.

Mrs Heavey said she would like to see politicians making bold choices about childcare and support for parents, considering solutions on a much longer timeline than one political term.

She said this was a necessity given Jersey's ageing population.

She said: "We can't just keep saying with every new government that goes in that we're going to basically start a project and it's going to stop and then we start again.

"We have such a wonderful island and I think that we can be very, very family-focused, and we can look at solutions to encourage more people to bring their families here too, you know; have more children and to want to stay on the island."