Maternity Allowance and free childcare hours

[WolfMother326]

Hello,
I've been employed continuously for several years but always on short term contracts. I'm now going on maternity leave and due to changing jobs (not my choice, just end of contract) I will only be eligible for Maternity Allowance. I have two questions:
Will my older child be eligible for 30 free hours at his nursery during the whole 9 months of the paid period? He's 3 at the start of my leave period.
Will he be eligible for the 3 months unpaid period? I don't have a job to go back to technically although I plan to work again, so I'm not sure this even applies to me, and I'm only asking due to the childcare funding scheme.
Thanks

I don't know the answer to this but interested to see it as I may end up only getting MA on my mat leave later this year too. But it will be different for me as I will have a job that I'm on leave from and to go back to, it's just as I only work part-time and am now on sick leave, unless I recover enough to return to work very soon, I won't earn enough for SMP as will be getting SSP for some of the qualifying period sadly. Last time I got SMP so didn't have this issue and got TFC & the funded hours throughout for DC1.

Yes for the three months (providing what you bring in under MA is more than the threshold you need to earn for the funded childcare) and no for the unpaid three months.

Yes for the whole 12 months, because you get three months grace.

So if you get MA but not the full amount because your earnings were less during the qualifying period, you won't be entitled to it? Makes sense I suppose but that would be gutting for me if I had to pull DC2 out of nursery whilst on mat leave. I'm not sure they'd let me keep the place for them for my return to work if I did that either.

Thank you, this is helpful. @WeightoftheWorld I'm not sure it works that way. I think you can get 9 months MA if you've earned enough over a certain number of weeks in past year and can provide evidence. If you can get MA (through the job centre) you should be eligible for the same funding.