Pregnant Nanny, what do I do?

[workingmumoftwokids]

Early in the year, we discussed with our nanny that from january 2024 we'd need an after school nanny (no longer full time) and she was ok with it. We also discussed changing schedule from September (reduce her hours, shift the schedule while keeping the same pay) and while she wasn't pleased, she was ok with it.

However, she is now in the early stages of pregnancy and has been suffering a lot with vomits/nausea. She took the day off sick and I suggested she go to A&E if she is unwell and the GP is not able to see her.

I'm a bit worried she has the same issue that Kate had and will need lots of rest etc. which means she will need to take time off.

We have a boy that is only in nursery part time (14h-16h) and nursery can't take him for longer hours. Our oldest kid is in school until 15h30. We are both working parents with jobs that require us to be in the office at least 3x/week.

We can't really deal with uncertainty of her falling ill every now and again as we have no backup care and no family around. We also don't want to let her go as we feel that is unethical and we care for her, she has been with us for a couple of years, we want to treat her well and support her.

But what would you do? It's very hard to find childcare with a few hours notice. She also said she wants to work until her due date but I find that very hard and I'm assuming she will probably want to stop working in November (baby due in December). This means we will likely have less choice of nannies for after school then as most will have found a job in September.

We can't afford to pay 2 nannies at the same time just in case our main nanny is ill.

What would you do? What do you recommend?

Thank you!
A.

thank you so much for sharing this.
even on medication, do you think you could take care of a child? I assume you will need plenty of rest and that isnt always easy while taking care of a child.

I hadn't thought of the option of having one in SSP and a replacement nanny full time. this is a great idea, thank you, very helpful!

the role will stop existing end of the year as we move to only after school hours. may I ask how did you discuss this with your nanny? did you write it down or just verbally? Ours had mentioned she wouldn't be interested in only after school when we last spoke about it.

We had this exact scenario. Nanny was lovely, the dc adored her. She got pregnant unplanned (relevant because she was so upset it meant lots more days off due to stress). We were determined to stand by her in terms of not pressuring her, paying maternity and all the right things as I'd been treated so badly during my first pregnancy I wasn't about to do that.

But it cost us a FORTUNE in back up childcare. We had to make an arrangement with a local small nursery to pay them x per month for ad hoc fall back childcare. Children were stressed and didn't like the nursery, we both work ft so were stressed because we never knew til 7am if she'd come in or not.

Once she had the baby we mutually parted ways and we went for the nursery/school club model as that was more reliable.

Shame because she was amazing.

I went to a&e with morning sickness, I couldn't keep water down for three days at that point.

If she's suffering from Hyperemis or whatever it's called, it may be that she has to go on maternity leave much earlier. Assuming you pay her through a proper pay roll service, they can help with this (and please note that SMP is paid for by the government, not the employer - so you can claim it back unless you choose to top it up).

It may be that this is the route you take. As you were already planning to let her go at a certain point and this has been communicated with her, I'd have thought that in some ways, her going on early maternity leave would work in your favour and you'd then employ a new nanny on the new terms while meeting your SMP and, in time, redundancy obligations as already agreed.

Our nanny pay roll company provided this sort of advice so I would contact them and figure it out through them.

You can't force her to go to a and e! Her first port of call is mw or gp. Does your contract require a Fitnote after five days? What were your plans at the end of the year if you had made her redundant? Obviously your options are more restricted due to maternity rights.

I didn’t force her, I was just trying to help. I told her to speak to the GP if she was unwell, she said GP couldn’t see her. So I said try 111 or AE if you can’t keep any water down for 2 days.

it’s up to her to go/not go. I only wanted her to seek help if she is unwell as it could be quite serious for both her and the baby if she gets dehydrated. She chose not to go to AE but called 111 that recommended medication and booked some tests for her. I’m also in touch with an obgyn to give her advice as she asked me for that.

the plans at end of the year were to hire a new nanny with different working hours (instead of 45h down to 15-20h). I’m not sure how to legally do it but we’d discuss if she’d be open to change the contract and reduce hours and pay. If not, then redundancy and pay the notice period. Something like that. I’d ask the payroll company for the correct way to do this though.

You need to start discussions with your payroll company now. Pregnancy is a protected characteristic which means it is more complicated to make redundancies. Have you arranged maternity cover? How pg is she currently?

What does your contract say about sick pay? It might ultimately be better for her to go off on SSP/ go on maternity leave early rather than keep taking days off sick if unpaid.

If you let her go for pregnancy related reasons you will be breaking the law.

You cannot make her redundant and then hire a new nanny because that is not a redundancy situation and also illegal.

You need to get yourself some proper legal advice before you treat this woman wrongly and find yourself losing heavily in an employment tribunal.

OP do you have any emergency care as an employee benefit? My employer has an arrangement with an agency which offers temporary emergency in home (nanny) and nursery care - we get a few free sessions per year with the others subsidised. If neither you nor your partner has this as a benefit it’s probably possible to subscribe and pay for a similar service - ours is through Bright Horizons but our nanny used to work as a temp for one of the big agencies (I think Tinies?).

Assuming you use a pay roll company I’d ask them for advice as your first port of call. Given that the role will be redundant as at the end of her mat leave (for reasons unrelated to her pregnancy) there will be a way to manage that but it’s vital you do it properly.

You're welcome. My background is employment law so I am very careful about things like this. In the end we didn't see her for a period of about three weeks and could sense that she was becoming very stressed about it. She effectively hinted that she understand we couldn't carry on as it was.

I asked her to come off informal communications - WhatsApp etc - while she was ill and that I would send her a letter by email, to which I added a very warm covering note which gave her an indication of the tone of the letter and was designed to make reading it less stressful.

We really thought about what we could offer but also not to overpromise. I attached a draft reference, which was outstanding, and this made a huge difference. She responded very positively and I wish if anything we had had the discussion a few weeks earlier as waiting felt unkind. I was also careful to distinguish between our reason being to change to nursery care. In your case you had discussed a change with your nanny before her pregnancy, so it is not unreasonable.

In terms of the sickness, no, I absolutely couldn't work. I was in bed for two months and even my husband opening the door would make me sick. I was periodically an in-patient on a drip. That was a multiple pregnancy though and we have medical family who pushed me to push my doctors for escalation from the initial useless medication to much more effective treatment. I have often seen that mentioned on MN since - there is a disturbing common pattern of (older, male) GPs being reluctant to prescribe, and yet hyperemisis was a killer of women before drips.

It does end for most women and I was very healthy throughout the second half of my pregnancy.

It is really a case of distinguishing between your present health situation with your nanny and longer term plans. As long as you are reasonable in each and maintain the distinction, you will find a way through.

Pathetic.

You are basically trying to get rid of an employee because she is pregnant.

If you have a contract with her then employment laws apply and you need to follow them. I assume you already know that full well though and were just trying it on...

Thank you everyone that provided suggestions and understood the situation.

I didn’t know I could have a nanny on SSP and hire another one while she’s off ill. That was a great suggestion and we might end up doing that.

we also got the emergency childcare website set up that someone suggested.

we gave her a week off (full pay) to help her feel better and we’ll see how she feels afterwards.

That sounds like a good solution OP.

Ignore posters piling up on you. I wonder how many of them would be totally fine with their childcare costs doubling/ being completely unreliable day to day.

You cannot make her redundant and then hire a new nanny because that is not a redundancy situation and also illegal.

You absolutely can, if the reason is that the available hours are reducing a lot. We did exactly that when both our DC were in school and we could no longer offer 40+ hours a week of work. You need to follow the right legal process, including offering the "new" after-school role first to the existing nanny. We followed the legal process, working in tandem with our nanny payroll company who supported and advised, and paid our FT nanny redundancy then hired another nanny on an after-school contract.

However, the current pregnancy-related sickness is a different issue and OP needs to pay SSP and ensure she meets all her legal obligations as an employer with an employee who has a protected characteristic.

This, I think you’ll need to either suck up the cost for a short period or chance your luck at getting someone when she goes on mat leave.

Bubble childcare app would be my suggestion. Ideal for your current situation with your nanny

This isn't true, statutory sick pay is paid by the government to the employer (in one lump sum at the beginning of the maternity leave) so the family isn't ever out of pocket for this whole amount, though they will need to pay the holiday the nanny accrues whilst on maternity leave.

Wow. Imagine when you were pregnant op and had hg and your company said can't deal With you not coming in as being sick we will fire you

Your many is an employee - she has rights even more so now she is preg

I had severe hg (one reason why mini blondes is the only one) I feel for your nanny

Yes you can put her on ssp but that's £80 a week maybe - not even a days wages for the week

Smp you claim back from government so won't be out of pocket - while you employ a temp nanny

Yes if changing hours then her job isn't there anymore. You offer it to her - she can refuse and be made redundant

@workingmumoftwokids Thank you so much for posting this. We have found ourselves in an almost identical situation except we didn't explicitly talk to our nanny about our youngest starting full time school soon -- although I'm sure she could piece it together. I want to do the right thing and make sure she is fully supported both emotionally and financially. That said, I'm terrified I'm going to lose my job because of the uncertainty with hours and we are barely able to afford this ourselves. We were going to have chat with her about needing reduced hours come spring with an eye on the autumn but assumed she wouldn't take the offer. The plan was to try and work something out so she felt able find something that suited her better with full transparency of open communication. I feel strangely unable to talk to her about any of this now because I don't want to put an ounce of stress or pressure on her. That said, we are incredibly stressed.

Can I ask you how it all worked out for you? Is there anyone you spoke with or anything you read that you would recommend? It seems there's a lot of emotionally charged accusations when this is discussed

Hi. It’s always hard to talk about this because most people will try to make you feel bad, whatever it is you do. We gave her paid time off when she was ill (everytime she was ill), paid her full time even when we didn’t need those hours anymore etc just to do the best for her. It came at a high cost for us but we could afford it (even though it was hard). Let me tell you how it worked out for us:

• she always knew we were going to move to after school nanny because little one was starting school
• she had hyperemesis and a bunch of other complications so she would take time off sick at least once a month. we always paid her whether she was sick or not plus we paid for backup nanny when she was sick so for us it was very expensive. not great tbh.
• the mat leave pay is calculated on the last 6-8w (not 100% sure) of her pay. So if we reduced her hours like we wanted too, she would have a worse mat leave. we ended up paying her for 45h even though she only worked 20h. again, we could afford it. It wasn’t great and not only we were paying for more hours we were also paying for backup everytime she was off sick.
• overall, we have a good relationship but felt this put a lot of stress on both sides. She felt bad for missing work but she knew she couldn’t make it. We felt stressed for all the extra money we were paying because it stressed us financially. it wasn’t great but it’s done and now she’s on mat leave. However she appreciated that we always tried to do the right thing even if that meant at a financial cost for us.
• due to all the health problems, our kids also ended up having worse care. As she couldn’t walk much (neither early on nor later on), kid barely left the house on some days and as a very active child, thr behaviour got worse because kid wasn’t able to go out and exercise. She noticed and admitted this herself, that she knew kid wasn’t doing so great because kid was stuck at home.

my advice: if her baby is due before the reduced hours, I wouldn’t worry so much (other than beware she may not be as active). I was active with both, and even heavily pregnant with my 2nd one, I’d always take the oldest to the park etc. but each pregnancy is different and people also handle it differently.

If you have to let her go before the reduced hours I’d say a few things for you to consider:

• if she stays with reduced hours, her mat leave pay will also be reduced
• this means she might want to leave early and find another full time job. However not sure how realistic that is since most people won’t want to hire a pregnant person (just being realistic).
• it will put a strain on your finances. assume she’ll skip work 1x/month for appointments etc so be prepared for that, backup care, you taking time off work etc.
• around 20weeks she’ll have to give you the date when she plans to go on maternity leave.
• if her maternity leave would start after reduced hours, speak to her. What would you prefer: she leaves now or doesn’t leave and stays with reduced hours?
• Realistically , our nanny wouldn’t been able to work full time on the 3rd trimester even if we needed her to. She said so herself.
• the maternity leave pay is paid by the government, not you.

its not an easy answer for a lot of reasons: you want to do the right thing, stress about childcare and also financial stress.

id say think about all options:

• her leaving now
• her staying until LO starts school
• her staying until due date with reduced hours

then think about how you’d deal with these. And I’d have an open discussion with her. And check your finances too. As an employer, it’s really hard to pay for a nanny when they are off sick plus backup nanny plus yourself missing your work. It was stressful times. In the end, it has to work for everyone.

things you can/ can’t do:

• You can’t make her redundant and hire someone else with exact same hours
• you can offer reduced hours and if she doesn’t accept it, you can let her go with notice period
• You can’t suggest she leaves because it’s easier for you.

she is the one that can choose to stay/leave and you are the the one that decides on when to reduce hours.

sorry, long post but I hope it helps. No one told me most of this stuff so tried to tell you my detailed experience.

best of luck!!

Thank you so much - I really appreciate this response. It's shocking how hard it is to get such detailed information x

Thank you @workingmumoftwokids !

This is great advice. It sounds like it was stressful but it's clear you handled it incredibly well. Hopefully everything will work out for us