Does this sound right to you?

[Teapot13]

Not sure this is the right place for this, but here goes. A nanny I know from the playgroup circuit has been injured while working. "Mary" was walking down the stairs, carrying the toddler, and lost her footing and fell. Because she was carrying the toddler, she didn't use her arms to break her fall as one normally would. Toddler is fine but Mary has a complex fracture to her ankle which has required surgery. She can't work for 6 weeks, and will need lots of physio. She was complaining that she won't be earning while she is off work.

Only several hours later did it occur to me that that's not on she was injured at work shouldn't the employer pay?

Do any of you veteran nannies/nanny-employers know what is the usual practice? Ideally they would both have insurance for this and it would be a non-issue.

SSP would be paid I expect. It's not much money though.

Injury at work may have been caused by their employer but the employee has a duty of care in my view to check their working environment for trip hazards and as they are the only person at their place of work, they make a temporary fix. Just my view though, plus you don't say exactly what happened - "mary" may not have tripped on something, they may have just been careless.

I would doubt there is any Usual Practice. I would imagine that this sort of thing would be at being on full pay, or half pay, or some other thing beyond SSP, would be at the discretion of the employer.

Employers liability insurance may provide some cover if the employer was liable for something, but was the accident caused by the employer?

Does the nanny have insurance cover for such things... no idea but I suspect it does not cover the nanny themselves, only the child/children in their care.
In a MM policy I can find cover for: "accidental bodily injury (including death) to any person including any minded child in your care". In the exclusions it says "accidental bodily injury to you your family or any employee" is excluded. So I don't think a nanny insurance policy is likely to cover this situation, as I think it is intended to cover claims against the nanny, not claims made by the nanny.

Whist it would be lovely if our employers would pay us in full if we had an accident which prevented us coming to work, could many employers afford to do that along with also paying for alternative childcare?

Maybe they could take some of the time as annual leave? Though I do wonder if that then affects SSP entitlement - anyone know how taking annual leave would affect SSP?

She is entitled to SSP. Some employers may pay more, either a reduced rate of pay or full pay for a limited period.

All employers must have Employers Liability Insurance; in order to succeed in a claim against this you need to prove negligence on the part of the employer (for instance not having an adequate handrail may be negligence). There are plenty of ambulance chasing firms (and probably some reputable ones) that will manage a claim, or if the nanny has insurance with a legal help line that may be a good place to start.

The only other insurance that is likely to cover this is if the nanny has Income Protection Insurance, but this is often not economically viable.

Finally, this is a notifiable accident under RIDDOR and the employer should contact the HSE to make a report.

Thanks. . . well, at least SSP is something.