Employer giving me a hard time over taking annual leave to care for sick child

[Ticklemonster2]

Recently my ds has been in hospital for 3 days and had chicken pox two weeks later. I work part time for a big employer. In total I had to take 6 days off unplanned annual leave in a month to care for him in hospital and at home due to no alternative childcare (and because my son needed me).
On returning to work I was given a really hard time only to read on this forum that I am entitled to parental leave (albeit unpaid). This was never mentioned and I have been made to feel like I should leave for fear that my son might be ill again.
I made my employer aware that, other than his nursery place, I had no emergency child care for times when he is ill before I returned to work from maternity leave.
Should my employer be acting in this way?

Hi Ticklemonster2. I am not expert, but I don't think your employer should make you feel that way. We don't have any family around, so when my DDs are ill, either my husband or me have to take time off to look after them.
Hopefully someone else with more knowledge can advise you better.

Can the service support your absence? If it can, then the reason for your absence is none of your boss' business.

I know it's a PITA for your boss when you need the annual leave unexpectedly but he shouldn't be giving you a hard time. If he did make you feel like leaving then it would be constructive dismissal.

If your HR department is any good then perhaps have a quiet word with them to see if they can help.

In a word.... No they can't do anything about it. I had a similar situation with my work, had to take it further and won!!

You are entitled to 'reasonable leave' and so as long as this pattern does not continue for too long they can't do anything after a month!! They certainly cannot hint at you about leaving if that's what they're doing!

They shouldn't be acting in this way, no, but you are not entitled to take emergency time off for any longer than it takes it get emergency childcare in place. So you are definitely NOT allowed to simply take time off every time your child is ill.

Hospital admissions are one thing, and in reality I think most HR departments would support someone taking time off for a emergency hospital admission even if it took someone out for up to a couple of weeks. BUT it is not considered acceptable to take time off for things like chicken pox, etc. It is a parent's responsibility to arrange alternative child care in these instances, and simply stating that you do not have back-up childcare does not release you from that responsibility. It is not the employers business how difficult this is nor how expensive one-off childcare is, nor how much a mum wants to be with her child when they are ill. I've been there too and it sucks, but that is the law.

The fact is that working parents with unsympathetic employers need to have a back up plan in place for when their children fall ill, and simply taking unpaid time off is not an acceptable plan if your employer has not agreed to it.

Parental leave is an entirely different thing, and usually needs to be applied for and approved in advance. Whilst you do have a right to unpaid parental leave, you do not have the right to take it as and when you wish, and many employers will have a strict policy for applying in advance and for taking minimum/maximum blocks of leave at a time.

Stillsquiffy who would look after a child with chicken pox? If you have no family?

OP what do you mean by 'given a really hard time'? What have they said or done?

You are entitled to a day or two unpaid emergency leave, yes. You are not entitled to take the duration of a child's illness off, and you are not entitled to take holiday on such short notice as you have been doing.

Without knowing what 'given a hard time' actually is, it's difficult to say whether your employer is being unreasonable. Also, you say you work part time and have taken 6 days in a month. If you work 2 days a week, that's 3 weeks off at very short notice, or if 3 days a week, that's 2 weeks at short notice.

As squiffy says, what back up childcare arrangements any individual employee has (or has not) made are not the employer's concern.

In reality, as long as time off for a child's illness is split between two parents/both partners and perhaps a combination of annual leave and unpaid emergency leave are used, that would normally be acceptable.

But OP if you've taken maybe 2 or 3 weeks leave at very short notice I can see why your employer is less than sympathetic. Is your son's father around and taking his fair share of time off?

That's terrible, I wouldn't want anyone else but me looking after my sick child. Wtf do you do if you've no extended family, leave a sick child with a stranger?

So glad I have an understanding boss.

Flowery they have cancelled training I was due to have, not allowed me to take part in projects etc. comments are regularly made by my boss that it's 'not working out'. I get moaned at when I come into work on a very poor nights sleep, even though I perform as normal. I can't seem to win. They need to cut jobs and I feel I am being pressured to leave.
My husband has helped with child care and we cared for ds when I'll between us. But with chicken pox and severe eczema no one else was willing to have him and we have no extended family.

"I get moaned at when I come into work on a very poor nights sleep, even though I perform as normal."

then how do they know you had a poor night's sleep?

If you haven't been around much for the past month it may not have been unreasonable to cancel training and take you off a project. I also doubt that after a sleepless night you are performing as usual- everyone I know (myself) included have reduced performance after broken nights.

There are emergency nannies - expensive but might be opworth looking into?

If I were you I would have said I was sick and self cert for the 7 days. I think it's disgusting how you have been treated and I think it's ridiculous for employers to expect people to rent-a-nanny if their children are ill. How awful for an infant not to be able to be looked after by his mum too.

I am prepared to be shouted at but childcare is not the employers problem..... i think hospital admission is different but i agree with the other posters only leave to find childcare for chickenpox is acceptable and reasonable. Think about it from an employers point of view, if every employee took the full time off every time there child was sick no one would ever be at work and it costs the business money. For all the above reasons i am in the process of working out my notice to be a SAHM, i have no family close by, DH is unable to take time off for childcare and therefor we have decided to make huge financial decisions for me not to work. DD1 has chest problems and can be unwell, its not my employers problem its ours.

Oh and sooty and taking sick leave when you yourself arent sick is fraud.

Mrsv2 we are also considering if our finances can stretch to me being a SAHM until the children are at school. Working with no emergency child care seems to be unrealistic. I will be speaking to my union though!
There is no way I would leave DS with a stranger no matter how much they cost - how cruel.

i havent had any comments about time off but i feel guilty about added work pressure on my colleagues. DD is only 1 and we are relatively new to the area so good friends and family are over 2hrs away. Its hard and there will be huge sacrifices but it can be done. Good luck

Out of interest - where would you find paid-for child care which accepts a chickenpoxed child?

Widowwadman - emergency nannies (via agencies) will cover chicken pox.

And such services exist nationwide or is it more something you might find in big cities? I'm just curious.
Thankfully I always managed to work it out with my employer by sharing emergencies with my husband, working from home etc, but if my employer wasn't so accomodating I'd probably be stuffed.

It may not be an employer's problem but the benefits in loyalty, going the extra mile, staff morale etc to be gained from being flexible in this situation is surely worth money to the employer in the end, so long as the employees are not taking the p* of course and are otherwise valuable staff.

1. Idiot boss
2. This 'not working out' etc business because of child care may be sexual discrimination
3. Withdrawing training and taking you off projects for this is, I am sure breach of contract/constructive dismissal/bullying etc.
4. See point 1 again. What a fool - managing this well gets you onside and re focussed and compensating managing this badly causes work to rule, leaving and resentment.
5. If it is fear driving these comments, not actual proven underperformance then it is unreasonable, discrimination etc.
6. I DON'T CARE if the law doesn't agree, this is bad practice.
7. This is my second evil curse this week. I hope your boss has an unpredictable emergency sharpish so you can tell him how ineffective he is afterwards.
8. re-iterate points 1 and 4.

People are getting a bit hysterical here. And I say that as a working parent who has had plenty of time off over the years and plenty of other times when I have spent sleepless nights worrying about what to do with ill children.

It is perfectly reasonable for your employer to cancel training if they have a reasonable expectation that you may not be able to attend. They are being charged for this training (even if in-house) and with 6 days off in a month from a part-time staff member, that must be about 50% absence. Have they specifically told you have been removed from training because of absence of have others also been removed? Is it in fact a cost issue/lack of participants which has caused cancellation of training?

Similarly, if you are out of the office unexpectedly you cannot be contributing to projects - projects which still need to be completed, probably to a deadline. What do you expect the employer to do?

To the people who are saying that they could never leave a sick child with a stranger, do you really think it is reasonable for your employer to cover every illness of your child? If that is the attitude which you take into the workplace, all of the talk of flexibility, loyalty to the company etc will remain just that - talk which will never be put into practice.

this is discrimination - they are not allowed to cancel training days etc because you've taken time off for ill children!
You had better talk to a union rep, and make sure you record every instance of when this happens.

Nickel we haven't yet established that the cancellation of the training was due to the OPs time off, we need her to confirm this and that she is the only person who has had training cancelled, in which instance it might be discriminatory. If the employer can show that a course has been cancelled or that numbers attending had to be reduded or that a dept training budget has been cut or a number of other things, then it's not discriminatory necessarily.

The course was cancelled because of the time off. They knew I was returning to attend the course over a week later. The course went ahead and was not cancelled, but my place was withdrawn. No cuts to budget and the course was well attended.
There was no deadline to the project and it was only small. I would have done it in my own time, it was easy and I'm more than willing. I got the impression I was withdrawn from it to prove some point.

Op, I had a similar situation. My son was blue lighted to hospital twice in the space of 2 months with severe respiratory distress resulting in hospital admissions. We have no family and I defy anyone to leave a severly ill baby in hospital and go to work.
The first time I received parental leave which I was very grateful for. The second time I was told I must work and leave my child alone in hospital (in HDU!).
I seriously was in no state to work, my baby was blue and hooked up to tubes and monitors. Now I realise employers have a business to run and it pisses me off when people take time off at the drop of a hat for children with a cold but a hospitalised child is a different matter.
I do not go the extra mile for my employer now whereas I always bent over backwards before.
I do sympathize with you OP.