Parental Leave
Providing you meet the required conditions, if you are a
parent to a child under the age of five, or a disabled child under the
age of eighteen, then you have a statutory right to take unpaid time off
work to care for them.
The basics of parental leave:
If you have worked for the same employer for a year then
you are entitled to:
- 13 weeks off work (in total, not per year) for each child, up to their
fifth birthday (or up to five years after the placement date of an adopted
child) - 18 weeks for each disabled child, up to the child’s 18th birthday
Unlike maternity or paternity leave, parental leave is
usually unpaid. Foster parents are not entitled to parental leave.
You only have a right to parental leave if:
- you have been employed by the same company for a year or more
- you are an ‘employee’, with a contract of employment (most agency
and casual staff don’t have the right to parental leave) - you are a parent named on the child’s birth certificate, or
- you are named on the child’s adoption certificate, or
- you have legal parental responsibility for a child under five (18
if disabled)
Either parent has the right to parental leave. However,
if you are separated and your ex-partner looks after the children, then
you should have the right to parental leave providing you keep formal
parental responsibility for the children.
How does Parental Leave work?
Employers and employees should ideally make their own agreements
about how parental leave will work. However, if this is not posssible,
then the following system applies:
- One week blocks: leave must be taken in blocks of full weeks.
If you need to take the odd day off to take your child to the dentist
etc then you should use your holiday allowance or ask your employer
if you can work flexibly. However, if your child has a disability, then
you can take time off in days instead of weeks, to enable you to use
parental leave for things like regular hospital visits - Four weeks per year: You cannot take more than four weeks leave
for any one child in a year - Giving notice: You must give at least 21 days notice, preferably
in writing, of when you wish to take parental leave - Postponing your leave: Unless you are wishing to take parental
leave immediately after the birth or the adoption of your child, your
employer has the right to postpone your leave for up to six months.
However, they must give you notice of this within seven days of you
requesting parental leave, and they can only postpone your leave if
they feel it would disrupt the business
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