Can anyone help with this work situation?

can your child’s father/family members help out? Even for a week each, that way you’d be using less annual leave/unpaid leave.

Assuming this is for treatment rather than say work experience, if you were a member of my team I’d say to crack on and do what you need to. No messing with annual leave or officially making up hours.

My work just let me get on with it when I had to take DH to radiotherapy every day for 6 weeks. It was an hour drive each way.
They were very understanding and I am forever grateful.

You need to discuss with your manager.

Is there a possibility to drop DC off a bit early and/or pick up a bit late. As they are 15 they can be left on their own at the hospital for an hour or so I would have thought. If you could drop off early and get back for 9, take 30 mins for lunch then you would hardly be missing any working hours.

Should have said best wishes to your child. I hope they feel better very soon. It must be very distressing for you all. Look after yourself, take your mood and mental health seriously and remember you can self certify for your mental health for up to 5 days, and see a GP if you need more time off. The last thing your child or your work needs is you making yourself ill trying to do too much.

I think go to them with a plan for making up some of the hours and see what they say. I'm fairly confident mine would fine a way to do some at least as compassionate leave. Could you gain 2.5 hours a week back straight away by shortening your lunch break?

I would try to do a patchwork solution. Say 10 hours a week could be 2.5 hours worked in lunchtimes, 2.5 hours worked outside normal hours, 2.5h paid compassionate leave, 2.5 hours unpaid. If I were your manager I'd come back more generous than that but as the employee I'd be wanting to show willing to minimise the impact on the business.

If your child qualifies as having a disability you have a right to take parental leave in days instead of whole weeks, but a good employer will offer so much more flexibility than this anyway.

I think in my work it would be work flexibly to make the time up or take annual leave.

There is emergency leave but it's unpaid.

Could you do something like take half a day's leave each week then make the time up that hasn't been covered?
Can you work Saturday mornings?

💕

Yes, carer's leave used to be paid at my place of work too. Until dipstick Lib Dem MP Wendy Chamberlain fought for carers' right to unpaid leave, at which point it became unpaid. She never stops congratulating herself about it, either.

Couldn't you drop your child off early and pick them up when you finish work? At 15 I'm sure they'd be able to sit and play on their phone while they wait.

Two things:

15 years old - does your child need someone to take them? I think you'll get less sympathy and flexibility for a 15 year old than if they were young. (You haven't mentioned the reason for the hospital trip so I fully appreciate they may absolutely need taking).

Where is your partner in this? If s/he does one journey then working flexible hours would be much easier. If you were my member of staff I would try to be flexible as long as you were doing everything to avoid the problem (I.e had explored other options - partner, family etc).

If one of my staff asked about this I’d let them have the time off not recorded anywhere. For a situation like an ill child that is.

At 15 is there any chance they would be able to get there alone and you collect (or vice versa)? You might be able to figure out an early start and working through lunch arrangement that would result in you not needing to take any leave if you could do that.

Obviously I am saying this with no knowledge whatsoever regarding why the e hospital visits are taking place or whether your child is capable/confident enough but maybe worth considering if it could work. Or is there anyone else who could help at all if not?

Otherwise I would say annual leave or unpaid carers leave would be the two obvious options.

this is what we'd do at work too, assuming you have 12 days annual.leave left to use

You have the legal right to some care leave, but in strictness that is only for an emergency. The precise detail of your entitlement and whether it is paid or unpaid depends on your employer's policy. No point asking us.

As a manager if I had an employee in this situation I would suggest 1 day a week annual leave (annual leave system would only let this be recorded) to cover most of the hours and then the remainder, you can make it up another time as flexi. But only if you didn't want unpaid leave.

It's a discussion for your manager
They might have discretionary paid carers leave or they might use the national carers leave which I think might be unpaid?
They might say you can take it as X amounts of annual leave or they might say you can't use your annual leave as separate hours and will need to book whole days off
They might say you can work reduced hours for 12 weeks on full pay or might say you'll need to drop your hours for those weeks and take a pay cut
We can't know

How old is your child?

Talk to your boss to see if they have a solution. Someone in my team has to do something similar and we have been able to adjust to the situation.

they skip their lunch to make up some hours and the rest is done on compassionate grounds

Talk to your manager and explain the situation. There may be a way to reduce hours in the short term.

would you be able to make t he time up in future?

Check your work policies. There is usually a carers/family leave but as PP said it will be unpaid.

Will they allow you to take annual leave by the hour rather than half days? Is there another parent to take a turn? Or a grandparent?