Extending maternity leave - can anyone advise please?

[PoisonedApple]

Hello all, I hope someone can help as I have a meeting at work tomorrow at 10am to discuss return to work.

I have taken 1 year maternity leave which ends (including accrued holiday) in the middle of July.

My first child is due to start school at the beginning of September and I would like to put off going back to work until then as I am going to be really struggling with childcare, both finding it and paying for it!

She is in nursery 2 days per week and the baby is booked to join her on my return to work. The baby is fine, lots of space in her unit for additional days but the preschool unit is full, no space for additional days so I would have to find an alternative for 1 day a week which I am finding hard to do.

So my question is can I ask for an additional 6 weeks off after my 1 year maternity leave and what are the legalities of it all?

Thank you very much for any advice.

You are entitled to unpaid parental leave, but only up to 4 weeks a year. Could you ask to use that and annual leave?

You have to be careful, if you go off for longer than a year, you don't have a right to your old job (or a similar job) when you go back.

Thank you noble that is very helpful. I don't want to go back at all really but need something... I will see what they say and then at least will have some time to look for another job if its a no...

I'm going back a year to the day after my mat leave start but then immediately taking my accrued 6 weeks annual leave. You could probably do that, and y

**you start getting paid again too which is great!

It's not four weeks a year for parental leave its four weeks per child per year so in your case 8 weeks. So yes you. You can request it but it is up to the company if it is a convenient time for them for you to take it.

Does your employer offer a career break policy? If so you could try applying under that. You can request 4 weeks parental leave but it doesn't have to be granted for the time you request if it's not convenient at the time for your employer. You can also only use this once, so if you use the full 4 weeks then that would be it.

Basically there's nothing you can request that your employer has to agree to, but if they have got decent maternity cover for you who would be willing to stay on an extra 6 weeks then there's no reason realistically why they can't agree to it (would obviously be unpaid).

I took a year's maternity leave, including the unpaid bit, then "went back" (but didn't actually!) on paper to secure my job, then took accumulated annual leave from the year I was off, some KIT days in lieu and some annual leave from the new year. Amounted to 15 months in total.

You said its only one day a week that you're without childcare - could you rearrange how you're using your annual leave at the end of your mat leave so that you can save 6 days to take off one day per week to get you through the period?

Eg go back to work 2 weeks earlier and then use those 10 days' leave to take one day per week for the 8 weeks until your DC starts school.

I hope that makes sense!

Obviously this only works if you can afford the childcare for both DCs for the period, but if it'll keep your job for you then it'd be worth it even if your whole salary is taken up by the two places: you'd be no worse off than if you took unpaid leave but would have a job to go back to.