THE major extension to free childcare announced in the UK yesterday should be replicated in Jersey to help address the Island’s recruitment crisis and ease the financial strain on parents, according to the head of a Scrutiny panel.
In a landmark announcement in the UK Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said all England-resident parents of children aged nine months to five years old would receive 30 free hours of childcare per week by September 2025.
The government’s independent forecaster predicted this would allow 60,000 more parents to enter the workforce.
Currently in Jersey and the UK, only parents of children aged three and four are entitled to 30 hours of free childcare.
Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel chair Catherine Curtis said she fully supported extending the free provision in Jersey to give parents ‘the opportunity to take up paid work, allowing them to make the best choices for their own family circumstances’.
She added that such a move would lead to ‘improvements to our economy with more people in the workforce and bringing their skills to the community’ and ‘providing more play, educational and social opportunities for babies and young children’.
Deputy Curtis added: ‘The difficulties are in finding sufficient staff for the nurseries, as Jersey does have a problem with recruitment and retention, tied to our high cost of living.
‘However, the government could make plans to implement this within the next few years.’
Meanwhile, Deputy Raluca Kovacs, a member of the States Diversity Forum, said she was ‘strongly advocating a review of childcare’.
She added: ‘There are plans to review childcare aid, but nothing is decided or set in stone. I’m not sure if we will follow the UK now, but it would be useful for working parents.
‘One of the main products of gender inequality is unpaid absence but more childcare aid would allow more flexibility for women getting back into work because women often provide the main responsibility of childcare.’
A newly published report from PwC Channel Islands highlighted that incentives to encourage women back into work were needed, and that ‘looking at ways to further support childcare costs is key’.
The report added: ‘The latest index acknowledges there are people who can afford not to work or who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to work. However, it is more likely that significant barriers such as the lack of flexibility from employers and the high costs of childcare are disincentivising women, in particular, from working full-time or working at all.
‘When childcare costs and parental leave benefits are compared with the leading territories, Jersey is behind the curve in terms of support for women and parents.’
Speaking after the release of the Channel Islands Women in Work Index 2023, PwC Channel Island’s chief strategy officer Leyla Yildirim said: ‘It should be a top priority to attract and incentivise everyone who is able and wants to return to come back into the workforce. Where we have known barriers to that being achieved, we must remove them.’
Appearing at a Chamber of Commerce lunch at The Royal Yacht Hotel yesterday, Ms Yildirim said: ‘There are huge challenges ahead facing the Island.
‘We do have a sizeable pool of untapped talent in Jersey, talent which, for a variety of reasons, is disincentivised to be working, and we need to look at what the barriers are which are preventing those people from working and look to see how we can remove them.’
She added: ‘Is it any wonder we’ve got high numbers of women not in work when they are having to fork out £21,000 to have their child looked after? You’re going to have to be earning a good amount of money to afford that.’
Jacqui Patton, managing director of Ink Blot Creative and former head of communications for RBS International, said: ‘With UK parents facing some of the highest childcare costs in the world (as per data from OECD), it’s increasingly hard for people to return to work if their wages won’t do much to cover the costs of childcare when they do.
‘As such, businesses miss out on a significant pool of talented and experienced people, the majority of whom are female, whose careers stop or are slowed until their children go to school.
‘By expanding free childcare in the next budget, UK businesses will no doubt benefit from a wider pool of more diverse talent, which can only be a good thing for the growth and stability of the economy.’
