Unpaid/paid leave when child sick?

[jaabaar]

Hi,

Just realised that whenever your baby is sick and you have to miss work looking after her, you do not get paid. (not working hourly but with contract).

Did not realise this before :(((((

Is that right?

thanks...

Yup.
Choices are take turns with Dp
Build up a history of effectively working from home. (If you build up a good enough history, you can say - hang on while I turn cbeebies on)
Pretend you are sick (of course this buggers up your sick record).
Teachers will kill me for this one - dose them up with calpol and wait for the call home.

Yes. Why do you think you should be paid if you are not working? We offer three days paid in which staff are
expected to find alternative childcare. We then consider
unpaid leave/compassionate leave.

Did you seriously think that the default position was that you WOULD be paid? How many businesses could afford that?

We keep a store of annual leave - approx 5 days each for us to take if kids are ill - the only other option that helps is that our childminder will take them a bit iller - and I am happy to leave them with her - than a nusery would be
if you have an on going issue then you can take parental leave but its unpaid

Hairylights + annh:
Of course I did not expect to be paid for not working! I was just aking if that is the law. You seem upset that I even raised the question???

I did however expect to be paid for 2 hours leaving earlier, thinking that I was working free overtime of 1 day per week for 8 years.

This is just to put my "expectations" (as you say) to be paid without working in context.

You seem to have very generous conditions of offering 3 days paid till alternative care is found. I did not even expect that?

Thanks for your replies.

Will probably have to quit my job as I pay money out of my pocket to go to work. And that I cant afford either. But again that is another issue....

Jaabear I think the fact that you said you did not realise leave for caring for a sick child was unpaid did give the impression you expected to be paid.

Making sure it's not always you who takes the leave and asking your employer if you can take emergencies out of your annual leave entitlement are the best bets if losing money is too difficult.

If it's a financial issue then leaving your job doesn't sound like a solution unless you think you can find something better paid/more convenient from a childcare point of view. Have you asked your employer if they will allow you to use your annual leave entitlement at short notice occasionally?

its the "find alternative childcare" that gets me

what are you meant to do, knit a granny?

if alternative childcare was available you wouldn't need to take unpaid leave when you're child was sick, would you?

Well you might do ssd. If child is taken ill at nursery or something, you would take emergency leave to go home, then in the course of that day or the following day you (by which I mean 'one') could arrange for granny to be available, or book an emergency nanny or get child's father to book annual leave, or whatever.

Those options might not work for everyone, I'm just saying that it's perfectly possible to be in a position where you need a day or two to get something else sorted, which is what the right to emergency unpaid leave is for.

Those options might be difficult for lots of people but the point is that's not the employer's fault or responsibility to pay for. Which is why most people use a combination of annual leave and taking in turns with other parent.

but flowery, what I'm trying to say is that what if there is no granny, no available father and certainly no emergency nannies nearby???

what then? do you get sacked if your kid is ill for more than a few days?

Where I used to work (am now self-employed) I could take 13 weeks of unpaid leave up in total until my child turned 5.

And yes, if you're off for ages with a sick child, it makes working very difficult.

I know not all of those options are possible for everyone, but on the other hand that's not the employer's problem.

Most employers are reasonably sympathetic and would allow the person to take longer unpaid or take some annual leave, but it's not for either employers or the government to say what someone is 'supposed' to do in those circumstances or to provide paid leave indefinitely.

Again most employers wouldn't sack someone for taking excessive leave, particularly if it wasn't frequent, but at the end of the day if someone kept taking weeks at a time off, both parties would need to consider whether the employment was viable.

ssd we offer a generous three days compared to some organisations!

If you cannot find alternative cildcare, you are supposed to find alternative childcare, or take annual leave or unpaid leave. Most organisations I know and have worked for allow this.

Why should a company pay a parent who's child is ill, when they are not doing any work? Companies and organisations are not made of money, and it is not their problem if someone's child is ill, I just can't see the logic in anyone thinking it is.

What's the alternative? Pay parents who can't work when their child is ill? How is that in any way fair?

You are right hairylights. It is not fair for companies. It is also not fair on colleagues without children.

I am just moaning a bit about my predicament. No relatives of my side are nearby neither are husbands. Aboslutely no back up if baby cannot go to nursery as cant find a childminder either who takes only a sick child on occasions.

What are my alternatives? (except not having a child?)

Some suggestions are good, e.g. alternate with husband to take unpaid leave. Or even pretend to be sick... or knitting a nanny (made me laugh!).

Thanks again for sharing and advising.

I believe that every parent is entitled to 13 weeks unpaid leave to care for children up to 5. Or am I wrong here too.....

Yes they are entitled to 13 weeks parental leave but this is different from emergency leave.

Parental leave usually has to be agreed 21 days beforehand and also it should be taken in blocks of 1 week (so if you only took a single day off, that would count as a week and your entitlement would reduce to 12 weeks etc). It is also not guaranteed as the business needs to authorise it and can reject applications if it does not fit in for business purposes.

It is not designed for emergency carer's leave but to allow parents to cover longer-term childcare etc (for example school holidays although I am not sure how many companies would agree to that).

If a child is ill you have four choices, send them to school/childminder if not too bad, take a day off sick yourself, take a day off as annual leave, or take the day unpaid. It's a problem we all face as working parents and cannot expect the employer or state to pay you for this.

I never ever said I would expect to be paid if my child was sick and I had no alternative but to be off with him, I would expect not to be paid

BUT what I wanted to know is how far does it go with you being off a lot with a sick child or children if you have more than one, also I'm talking about children over 5?

If it doesn't suit the business you work in (and it won't suit many but is a totally unavoidable situation if your child is ill and you have NO backup), can you be sacked?

Ultimately, yes. If you continually don't turn up for work for weeks at a time or something. Strictly speaking, as you are only entitled to 'emergency' time off, which would normally be a day or two, if you take a fortnight off without permission to look after a child, that could be a disciplinary issue.

In reality, most employers have some degree of sympathy, and what action they take is likely to depend on how excessive a problem it becomes, and how much effort they think you are making getting some kind of alternative sorted for at least some of the time.

payment is at employer discretion.check their policies. if you can try work at home,take calls,email in etc- maintain working profile and get paid

I must admit, I work in HR and when I went back to work after having my dd I knew that I'd effectively use my entire holiday as days off for when she was sick. My dh and I take it in turns to look after dd when she is sick, depending on who can more easily get out of work commitments. I now work for a different employer and although the same principle applies, there is some flexibility i.e. If I can make up the time at the week-end or evenings then I don't have to take the time out of my annual leave. I never understood emmergency leave etc as it is unpaid and I can't afford (as I'm sure no one else can) to take unpaid leave - hence using up the annual leave. Hey ho, life sucks.

Jabaar - what we did when our dc were small (they're teenagers now) is make sure we built up a support network so there were different options for emergency childcare.

We didn't have a lot of support from family either, so this involved things like swapping favours with friends and sometimes employing nannies from the children's nursery to help out at our home when they were on days off from the nursery.

And dh and I would take turns to look after the children when they were sick.

Admittedly it helped a lot that we both worked shifts and weekends, so our time off in the week was more flexible and so did some of our friends.

We still exchange favours - e.g. giving lifts, having teenagers to stay while their parents go away.

ssd - yes, you could be sacked if you ended up being more unreliable than the business could tolerate, as flowery says.

Funnily enough, we've recently been on the receiving end of colleagues having time off for dependents - with me and dh having to take on extra work and change hours at short notice. We don't mind as we know what a pita it can be, but it is disruptive and I can understand why colleagues without children can sometimes resent it.