Pregnant on an NHS fixed term contract

[RugMugTug]

I'm 5 months in to an NHS fixed term contract which is 12 months long (maternity cover). I've just found out I'm pregnant, so as it's early days I don't want to tell anyone yet.

What happens in terms if maternity pay and leave? I keep seeing that my rights are the same as a permanent employee but can't work our what that means.

Can anyone shed some light please?

Oh and I should probably say that I was working for a different trust, went on mat leave and got a new job with a different trust so have been working for the NHS for 4+ years consecutively, just different trusts.

Do they need to offer me a job at the end of my maternity leave? Or does the FTC just expire during mat leave?

Just replying to bump this for you really. This happened to me - the FTC was extended to allow me to take mat leave (mat pay & leave allowance same as if you were substantive contract). However as I had previous NHS service I had the same rights as if I had a substantive contract - I.e. At end of the the FTC I was redeployed rather than dismissed due to contract / project end. If they hadn't been able to redeploy me, I'd have had redundancy based on my service length.
The good thing is that if your FTC expires, and you don't want to return (choose to be SAHM for a while) you wouldn't have to repay the mat pay (whereas if you were substantive and chose not to return after taking the leave & pay, you might have to repay some of it I believe). Hope someone can come along with advice in your case (and to make sure that what I've said is correct....it all seemed a bit fluffy to me at the time (but such a hard pregnancy I just couldn't focus!).