PND after maternity leave

[AfterAdvice]

If I am off with PND as soon as my maternity leave ends, am I still protected from disciplinary action?

The 'protected period' for pregnancy related illness ends when your maternity leave ends, unfortunately there is no special protection after the end of mat leave for conditions relating to childbirth.

If your PND meets the conditions to be considered a disability under equality legislation (lasted or expected to last 12 months or more and has a substantial effect on day to day activities) then your employer would be obliged to consider reasonable adjustments before heading down any kind of disciplinary route.

My baby died shortly after she was born so I imagine it will have a substantial effect on everything for the rest of my life but there isn’t a single adjustment that will help, and it’s also not my employer’s fault this happened or how I feel so I would imagine their sympathy will be limited.

I'm so sorry to hear about your little baby girl. I have no advice but sending

In more practical terms, could you talk to your employer about flexible working if you feel a reduction in hours might help even for a short time?

Thank you and I think I will ask them if there is anything they can offer to help make things a little easier for me.

I'm so sorry to hear that

Definitely speak to them and ask if you can be referred to occupational health- they may be able to offer suggestions around adjustments that may help.

As suggested above, flexible working or a phased return to work might help you to ease back in to the work environment. If you're worried about hitting absence triggers and disciplinary action if there are days you're unable to work, you could talk to them about whether they can offer any flexibility around the absence management process.

For example, my employer has adjusted the trigger points in the past for people, e.g. where normally a hearing would be called if there are 3 absences in 3 months, we might increase that number of absences for a person with long term depression as we accept that they are more likely to have instances where they simply cannot attend due to the nature of their disability.

It's definitely worth having an open conversation with work and finding out what support they can offer you.