Baby and work expecting overnight trips - how?!

[Northernbeachbum]

My work expects us to do about 5 overnight (sometimes 2 night) trips away per year and we're not paid extra or given time back for it. Im going back to work soon,we have no family locally and all friends have their own children or do not drive so there will be no one who can pick up DS at all, between DP and i we've used holiday to cover some nursery to save money and there is no way he would be able to get out of work early. Where do i stand with saying "actually i cant do that"? They're, in my opinion, not even that worth while trips, basically team building galavanting (fun, but I'd rather be actually doing my job!)

x-posted with No Squirrels

After our first baby i had a job with late finishes and my husband worked away at times. It wasn't going to work. I decided to change jobs as I had a hefty commute. I found a 9-5 job so there's always one of us who can do nursery.

With regard to illness we both have unpaid parental leave entitlement.

Do you know that you need to give a month’s notice for this and it can be postponed by your employer?

is your employer a public body? If so the equality act may apply. This may be worth co soldering.

There's a child at my DD's nursery whose single mum is a flight attendant and the kid stays overnight at nursery. Could you do that?

It doesnt state the months notice in DPs contract I'm sure, just out of curiosity what is that time supposed to be used for if not child illness? I always assumed that's what it was supposed to be for

Dps work has been flexible, allowing him to start late to do nursery drop offs so i can do pick ups.

We are all field based with work, some people are more concentrated geographically so meetings are there. They generally have between a 5 min and 30 min trip to training. One other has a 2hr trip.

We're not that tight for money wrt using annual leave for avoiding using nursery too much its just we have a family wedding in 2020 in Australia so saving hard to be able to attend

@racecardriver DPs is yes.

Hubanmao I don’t disagree, but I couldn’t have continued in a job that required this was my point - unless employer prepared to show a bit of flexibility for that period of time. Which is why I suggested the OP checks this was part of her contract. Sometimes overnights are an essential part of being able to do the job, other times they aren’t.

hoho in mine and No Squirrels posts above there is an explanation/link to the statutory parental leave scheme and I reference "caring for dependants leave" which is different (and am not sure I've used the right title) but it can be confusing as they are actually aimed at different circumstances. The contractual reference may actually be about caring for dependents leave which is unexpected short notice leave to allow employee to put in place care arrangements not to undertake care arrangements. Although as I said some employers are more flexible

Have a read through this link, OP.
www.gov.uk/parental-leave
It's basically more for planned absences - house moves, operations where your child will need care for a longer period, travel abroad etc.

Short-term my employers (very family friendly) would allow me to go home at short notice to pick up a sick child, and perhaps work from home the next day depending on age of child and care needs. Or to make up the time flexibly. But for anything over a day's unplanned absence, they'd expect me to sort alternative arrangements - child's other parent, babysitter etc.

It can be really, really disruptive!

All I meant on your DP's job flexibility is that if, on the odd occasion, he needed to do both drop-off and pick-up, to accommodate your work pattern, then he shouldn't be afraid to ask for that - offering to make up hours at another time, work from home, whatever.

In the same way, you could ask that you didn't do 1-2 of the 'compulsory' training/overnights if you were genuinely unable, and as long as you are offering to make up the time/make up the training & review materials/attend the majority of what is needed for CPD then they should be able to be flexible.

And then if you can ask family e.g. grandparents to travel up for the odd couple of times to cover, then that would help too.

It doesn't need to be all or nothing, and you need to have a good back-up plan for all the 'known unknowns' that will occur when you're a working parent.

Myrtlesurprise bit confused as I wasn’t referring to either of those things!