18 weeks pregnant and redundant

[ivegotsunshineonacloudyday]

I am nearly 18 weeks pregnant (baby due early April) and my role has been made redundant. I am currently working my notice period and will be 21 weeks pregnant on my last day of work. I’ve been working at my company for 5 years, and my job is remote. The redundancy impacted a lot of people, and I don’t think my company treated me unfairly due to my pregnancy, but the timing is unfortunate as I missed my SMP eligibility by a few weeks, and it leaves me looking for work half-way into my pregnancy.

I have a 2.7 year old in nursery who benefits from the 30 hours of funded childcare for working parents, and we are set to lose that benefit the next time I have to reconfirm in February. This is quite a blow as I was expecting to have this funded childcare during my mat leave as it would make my life a bit easier at home while I am looking after the newborn. If I’m unable to find a job, I’ll lose the income I had expected to have for the remainder of my pregnancy along with those funded hours. If I do find a job, I worry that me announcing my pregnancy shortly after being hired will sour the experience and the manger’s impression of me. Obviously I didn’t choose to be in this situation, but the people pleaser in me is dreading that conversation should I be lucky enough to even find work. On top of it all, starting a new job half-way into pregnancy sounds exhausting and stressful.

I’m applying for new roles, but have not had luck thus far. In a perfect world, I’ll find a new permanent role that will allow me to earn money until I give birth, receive 30 hours for funded childcare while I am on mat leave, and will claim maternity allowance. I’m just not sure this will be in the cards for me. Has anyone been in this or a similar situation and have any advice? I’m going to start looking for temporary roles as I haven’t had luck with my job search thus far, but I’m mindful that this will not solve the issue of me losing the funded hours while I am on mat leave as the contract will end.

Please be gentle as I am struggling. Thanks <3

Hi, I'm on mat leave with my second. I was made redundant in Feb the same day I found out I was expecting. I had a frantic 2 months trying to find a new job before accepting that I'm on a career break and am getting maternity allowance. This is a similar amount to SMP, the only difference is smp can pay more in the 6 weeks then drops to the same amount as maternity allowance.
My little one is now 8 weeks, maternity allowance I think can start at 28 weeks and lasts for 9 months. I applied as soon as I could and will start looking for work when baby is around 6 months old. I've been looking at alternatives careers as my sector is really struggling in recent years and there's been a lot of jobs losses and a reduction in investment
I used the first few months to do some training to help me bolster some of my weaker aspects. I got unwell in pregnancy and at risk of preterm birth so would have had to stop working between 30-33 weeks.
My daughter had already start school so losing the 30 funded hours didn't impact me but we were using after school club and would lose the tax relief on the money we pay into our childcare account. We decided to keep her in after school club one evening a week and would occasionally need breakfast club. Before we lost this benefit we paid into more money and hat has helped with our childcare bill whilst on one wage. My redundancy package left me with ~6 months taken home pay as I was paid my 3month notice period rather than having to work it

@Superscientist thanks for your response and congrats on the birth of baby #2. I also think I might need to accept that I am on a career break. I think I struggle with the fact that the redundancy hurts my financial position even further than only losing an income given the loss of funded childcare hours and the loss of tax free childcare like you mentioned. It is all around upsetting. Your redundancy package seems very generous. My company is giving me the legal minimum payout and is making me work my notice despite me requesting not having to work it due to my circumstances. Thanks for the tip on paying more into the tax free childcare account before I lose the ability to put money in <3

I only got statutory for the redundancy aspect but the paid notice made a difference and I also had quite a lot of holiday as it was only 2 months into the new annual leave year and I still had 5 days left from the year before this added another week's salary to my pay out, the amount also included the 3 weeks I had worked that month. The timing was a bit awkward as had I worked my notice I would have been paid some of it in the next tax year. I got stung for tax and student loan payments as I essentially got paid 14 months pay in 12 months. It also meant I left immediately after being made redundant so I didn't get to say goodbye to colleagues.

Have you looked to see if you are entitled to any benefits?

Are you married? Depending on earnings transferring some of your tax allowance to your husband might be worth looking at. It doesn't make a huge difference but can help. My parents did this after my mum had to retire early.

You should also check if the child benefit is in your name as this will pay your NI contributions until the child is 12.

The other annoyance was my partner only got 2 weeks paternity leave. His enhanced package could only be used if I was in work. We had been planning on him taking 6 weeks as I got quite unwell after having my daughter and he was hoping to help me. His parents have been able to come up and fill the gap which has been helpful but its a shame it couldn't have been him

What sort of work do you do?