Grant-backed app hopes to support new parents in Jersey

A new free app is aiming to make having a baby in Jersey less overwhelming.

Parent Sense has been given a £100,000 government-backed grant to make it free to use.

The locally-based platform has been designed to support people through pregnancy and the first five years of a child's life.

It provides trusted, evidence-based guidance supplied by qualified health and childcare professionals on infant health, development, sleep, feeding and parental wellbeing. It includes webinars and an interactive chatbot.

Developed by tech company Sense-IT Limited, which came to Jersey on a Digital Jersey licence in 2020, support is tailored to each family based on their child's age and their needs.

CEO Meg Faure - an occupational therapist - and COO Tové de Chazal Gant have been working with innovators globally to improve maternal and early childhood health systems.

In March of this year they were selected to attend the 2026 Innovation Hub Fellowship at the Thrive Center at Georgetown University.

Initially, parents answer a set of questions that enables the platform to supply bespoke information.

Meg told Channel 103:

"An AI Assistant is built into the product, who learns about your baby.  So it will know that your baby is six weeks old, for example.

"So when you go on the next day and say 'what game can I play with my baby today?'  It will give you a game for a six week old who is just developing head control, for example."

"If you're baby was born premature, you will get prem baby content.  No matter how old your baby is, you will get specific content.

"The first five years of childhood are so important for longer-term health in individuals, so the easier we can make this for parents by providing a reliable and accessible support system, the better.”

The funding for Parent Sense was supplied by the Impact Jersey Innovation Programme, delivered by Digital Jersey.

This is the third project to receive a grant, after the ISLE HFpEF project – a clinical trial that aims to detect heart failure earlier and more effectively, and IslandView – which will create new high-resolution street-level imagery across Jersey.

Tony Moretta, CEO of Digital Jersey, said Impact Jersey is continuing to play a key role in addressing important issues across Jersey’s community through the application of technology.

"We often talk about the challenges of parenting and childcare and how the impact of those challenges is felt right across our healthcare system, economy and community.

"As well as supporting a significant number of parents, this initiative can feed into the island knowledge bank of parenting experiences and help inform future policy and parental support.”

Anonymised insights from Parent Sense will provide data about the experiences and needs of local parents, to support future planning and decision-making around healthcare, childcare and family services.