Sickness clause in standard nanny contract

[eversomuch]

I downloaded the ANA standard contract to draft a contract for our new nanny.

Everything seems pretty straightforward, except I'm not sure how to handle the sickness clause, which reads:

"SICKNESS
The Employer will administer the Government SSP scheme in accordance with legislation.
After 8 weeks of employment, the Employer will pay the Employee full pay for a period of ........... weeks, then........... pay for ........... weeks."

Is there a standard used here? Thanks!

I've never come across a standard for sickness in any of my contracts as a nanny. Usually it's just ssp, if you're lucky it's more. Currently I have 10 paid sick days per year, after that ssp. I've only used I think one or two sick days over my 2 plus years here and that was for d and v caught from the kids!

You could just put ssp in the contract then after maybe three months review it and if he or she isn't taking loads of days off add a few paid in?

I would just have:

The Nanny shall be entitled to receive statutory sick pay in accordance with the Government SSP scheme during periods of sickness absence.

Than you can decide on a case by case basis if you will insist that SSP is used or if you will do something different.

Some nannies may want there to be written in a certain number of permitted sick days. However writing in that the nanny can have several weeks sick seems excessive to me.

HMRC Helpsheet E14 (1Mb PDF) explains how SMP works, should you want to know about qualifying days and things like that.

I don't think there's a standard sickness clause, all my jobs have been different, most just had ssp.

my current contract states that I get 1 week full pay a year and then ssp after. in reality my lovely bosses paid me for 3 weeks when I was off after an operation this year and last year when I was seriously Ill and off for 8 weeks they paid me full pay for 2 weeks then half pay for 2 weeks before it went down to ssp however I hadn't taken a single day off sick for the 5 years prior.

my point is even if you just have ssp in the contract you can use your discretion, if your nanny rarely goes sick you may decide to pay the odd day however if she's always taking days off then you aren't obliged to pay her anything.