Parental leave.

[leander]

Hi I hope someone can helpme. I had to take a week off work last week to look after my ds as he was ill, I phoned worked and told them that I could work around my husbands shifts as he was on lates and could come in and work in the morning.They phoned me back and said no we dont need you then(I work in a supermarket) so I told them I wont be in then.They then asked me if I know the options with taking time off to care for someone else, they are, taking as unauthorised absence, using holidays or paying the time back which i had tried to do!!! I am not using my holidays and dont see why I should take it as UA.Anyway my dh mentioned parental leave and just wondered wher i stood with taking it as emergency parental leave.

Hi as far as i know you can take emergency parental leave at anytime but it is unpaid i think. The citizens advice would probably know better!!

There's two types of leave - emergency time off for dependents and parental leave . Both are unpaid but I think you need to give notice for parental leave and it may be that you should use up all your holiday leave before you are allowed to take emergency leave.

You don't have to use your holiday entitlement before you take emergency leave. It is there as unpaid leave to deal with emergencies such as a child being ill. The law is a bit grey with regards to the amount of time you can take however, it has to be reasonable and some companies interpret that as meaning just a day or two.

Parental leave is also unpaid but you have to give notice and your employer can defer when you take it for up to 6 months.

Technically, dependents leave in these circumstances would be unpaid time off to arrange for alternative care for your son if he was too unwell to go to school/nursery/childminder etc - not unpaid time off to look after him for the whole time when he could not go to school/nursery/childminder etc.. I would think it was a bit mean for an employer to have not spelt this out to an employee and then stick to the letter of the law.