Shared Parental Leave: share your views and you could win £300! NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Parents with children due or adopted from 5 April will be among the first to take advantage of Shared Parental Leave. To coincide with its introduction Shared Parental Leave, we have been asked by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills to find out what you think about this new policy for parents.

The team there say "From April 2015, parents will have greater choice and flexibility over how they share the care of their child in the first year of their life. Shared Parental Leave allows working couples share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay in a way that suits their work and family needs. For example, parents can take time off together or they can tag team, stopping and starting leave and returning to work in between if they wish.
Check your eligibility and how much pay you can get here. We'd love to know what you think about this and how you'd use it for your family."

So, please have a look at the information provided here and let us know on this thread what you think. If you or your partner is pregnant and your baby is due from 5 April do you think you'll use it? Would you have used it when you had your last child if it had been an option? Do you think you will share leave with your partner if you have children in the future? How would it work in your family?

Have a look at the video:

Add your comment by 30 March 2015 at 9am and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of your choice (from a list). Insight T&Cs apply

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Shame it's to late for us having our four children already .
But I think it's a great idea and hope it helps families from now on .

I had my baby in The Netherlands and something like this was already an option. My partner was able to take enough time off work to let us both settle into life as new parents. I was also able to spread my leave out over months so that I went back to work very gradually.

I think this is a no brainer and about time too in my opinion. I (sadly) think that not all employers will be as supportive of the initiative as they should be and that needs to change rapidly.

If this could be delayed and we would be allowed to use it in say, the third year, fabulous - I wanted to BF my DC until they self-weaned, so it was natural that I would be the SAHP and DH would go back to work after his two weeks paternity leave.

I think it is a good idea in theory, but I suspect it might not be taken up by as many couples as would like to because of financial restraints.

It would not have worked for us but its great to have a choice. If I was making more money then this would have worked for us or if I had an important job.

I think it is a great step forward, but flexibility in the work place should be made easier for everyone.

As I have always breastfed my babies I'm not sure shared care leave would work for us, however it would be great to have the option to do so.

My partner and I will benefit massively from this. I work part time and mainly from home so will only receive statutory maternity leave. I will give up 10 weeks of statutory pay and my partner will receive 10 weeks of full pay. We found this out by going directly to his employer's HR department and asking about their policy (which had only just been developed a few weeks ago). It helps that he works for a large company and also that I did lots of research once I heard about it-many companies will be providing enhanced packages for men, well above the £138 a week basic they would be entitled to. If anyone brings discrimination claims (which will surely happen) then those companies that offer women more than men may well be forced to offer equal pay to both for however long they take off under the SPL scheme.

Another massive benefit of the new scheme is that both of us can take our leave in blocks- so I am taking mine in 2 blocks and so is he. We can also both be off at the same time.

Hope this inspires some people to check what their partner's company offers!

Sadly chica I doubt discrimination claims will get anywhere. The way the scheme's been brought in means that shared parental leave and maternity leave are two different things. Employers don't have to offer equal maternity and shared leave packages unfortunately (as we have found out - DH's employer, we believe, are only offering the legal minimum, despite having an enhanced maternity package).

I think it's a great idea! It gives daddies a sense of duty in a very girly world where they can sometimes feel powerless! My OH and I have discussed this and feel it works really well for families like us, where I would like my time with our baby, but am also keen to provide and get back to work where I can feel normal again and he is keen to spend as much time with baby before going back to the daily grind. :) It's also quite a role-reversal as such, where it used to be "the woman" who stayed home to raise the baby, it's given men a refreshing change and they get to experience a little more of the magical down-time after having a baby, men need their rest too!! :)

I am completely behind this policy and feel it is a great move towards a more equal choice.

I am currently pregnant and need to research more fully. My feeling at the moment is that we would love to take advantage but may not be able to due to husbands employer - a small company where the impact of anyone leaving for a prolonged period is much higher than mine with 5000 employees. He is also in a technical yet competitive field where they could replace him, possibly cheaper as well. We would fear he wouldn't have a role to come back to if he was away for too long, despite the legislation preventing this.

We will be looking in to it more though as would like to share some time off toward the end of my maternity leave.

I totally agree that parents should be able to share like this. Although the tag team idea isn't very fair on the employer, especially of smaller companies.

Almac, it does somewhat depend on the line of work.

I guess I've mainly worked for small employers who've never taken on maternity cover - so someone popping in and out in a couple of blocks would actually have spread the load better.

I think it is a really good idea and give more equal to parents and their preference choice.

It would never have worked for us - DH is self-employed in a highly competitive field - also financially it wouldn't work. He didn't take any paternity leave (not even the two weeks) when our two children were born and I was up shovelling a tonne of gravel shortly after having a c-section. Thank goodness I'm quite healthy and robust.

I like the flexibility it offers parents. I'm not sure how employers will accommodate though.

And (selfishly), I wouldnt have wanted to share my leave. I had pND and struggled to bond with DD. She's a Daddy's girl and I think this would have been even harder to deal with emotionally when she was tiny if I was off to work while thru bonded even more.

I'm expecting my first child in September, and couldn't be more pleased about shared parental leave coming in just in time. DP and I run a business together, and this will let us both spend time as the primary carer and keeping our company afloat. We haven't figured out the exact details, but we will definitely be making use of the scheme.

In theory, it sounds like a good idea and would no doubt work well for some parents.

Not for us, though, as my DH owns his own company and struggled to even take a couple of days paternity leave with our children.

Anything that increases the options for families is a good thing, though.

I think it's a great idea if the decision is amicable, but I worry that some mums won't feel pressurised by their partners into sharing their leave and have to return to work before they are ready.

It's a good idea, allows mums and dads to share the care and the child(ren) would benefit too. I like the idea of 'tag-teaming' it means you'd have shorter periods of time away from work and wouldn't need refresher training on your return.
Good for Dad's too as they often feel left out of the child care.

I get frustrated when I read posts like Dulcet 's.

Her husband works for a small co so "can't" take advantage of SP leave. But what about all of the women who work for small companies and get pregnant?? Most take a lot more than a few weeks off and those companies have to cope then.

This sort of attitude unfortunately propagates the men-women divide in the workplace. Until it's as "normal" for men to take time off as women, women will always face discrimination at work.

Oh if only they'd had this option available to us! I had to leave work to be a full-time mum because logistically it didn't work out to employ childcare, and we didn't want to farm our newborn DDs out into childcare. This option could have enabled us BOTH to keep working and retain the benefits that comes with staying in employment. It would also have given us breathing space to get used to being new parents and I think our DDs would have had a much better bond with their dad too.

I think it's great but we are unlikely to use it since I plan to breastfeed all our children and the parental leave doesn't even cover that time.