Adoption leave

[CherryOrchard1]

Hi All
I have been recently speaking to my work regarding leave and would like your advice please. Here’s the situation...
My husband and I have a surrogate (genetically linked to us, with an egg donor - no genetic link with our surrogate) and we’ve been informed we need to take adoption leave as we are needing a parental order when our baby is born. I have asked work when my leave takes place. Baby is due on 5th August 2020 which is during the summer holidays. I am a teacher and was wondering if I had to take my leave then or whether it can be started on the 1st September - to optimise our financial situation. Our difficulty is, our surrogate has parental rights from when the baby is born and until the parental order is in place, we don’t have parental rights. Therefore she ‘could’ say we can’t have the baby until the order is in place. Can anyone sign post me or help me with this situation.
Many thanks

Hi,
If it's classed definitely as adoption leave with no tweaks for your circumstances, I imagine it would be the same as mine (I adopted). My LO came home in the summer holidays and my adoption leave had to start on that very day. I didn't have full parental rights back then either. I couldn't leave it until September unfortunately.

This was a couple of years ago in a maintained school as a teacher.
Good luck!

In normal circumstances, maternity leave starts the day the baby is born, not when you chose. So if baby is due in August, your leave will be in August. I used to teach and for theachers who had babies during summer, that was that. You really need to speak you your HR/local authority, it may be that they will not let you start parental leave whenever it suits you best and will count it from the moment baby is born.

At my work adoption/surrogacy is classed the same as maternity leave so I would 6 months full pay from the date everything was signed then 6 months statutory pay.

You need to ask your school and your union. The burgundy book covers adoption leave but not explicitly in the case of surrogacy. By instinct I would say that the date of your parental order would be a reasonable start point, but your school could insist on starting from the baby's DOB.