Employment advice needed!

[TExxx]

So I have had time off as I had to look after my parent who was sick with a terminal illness and has sadly passed away, I was off for approximately 4months from diagnosis. I am back at work now and I have had 4 days childcare days(unpaid) as unfortunately family matters and I had no childcare on those days, I have also had one sick day.
my manger wants to speak to me regarding time off.
I don’t feel like this is unreasonable time off due to the circumstances. Do you think I need to speak to someone further before I have a meeting?

I think you need to understand what it is they want to address first, then you can seek advice. It could just be a return to work chat to understand if you’re fit to be back. Or they may want to understand why you seem to be off so much - you may have a valid reason but your employer is also not unreasonable in wanting to know what’s going on.

I’ve been back at work since May - and had 4 days off since then.. for child care reasons. I’ll just have to wait and see what the meeting brings!

What’s your time off policy? Maybe start by reading that and see if you have breached anything. That’ll give you an idea. This could be the amount of times you’re off in a certain period (for example if you were off 1 day for childcare, then back one day, then off for childcare 2 days then back for a day then had another day off) you may see that as just 4 days, but they may see that as 4 instances in a month which would be a breach if that’s the policy. Or if you reported it wrong (example: emailed instead of calling).

It will depend how long you have been there and what your record has been like. You might also need a more robust childcare plan and they might want to understand if the kids’ dad or other parent is taking equal time off.

Not sure exactly when you returned to work in May so hard to comment fully.

It is a lot though ... if you've been back 3 months that equates to the equivalent of 20 days per annum.
Try not to be defensive when speaking with your manager, apologise and say you hope you can improve, it's been a blip.
If your children have a father he needs to take some emergency time off moving forward.

Edited as duplicated my post. Apologies

I’m sorry you’ve been through such a tough time. 💐

It sounds from your post that you were off for 4 months from, for example, January to April, came back in May and then have had 4 more days off in the last 12 weeks. I suspect your absence has triggered on the HR systems and work are concerned that, even with good reasons, it’s at the higher end of what’s acceptable.

My advice would be to go into the meeting ready to be open about the fact that you have been off a lot this year and able to talk about what you’ve put in place so that you can be at work. It might be emergency childcare such as another family member being able to cover at short notice etc. If you need additional support be prepared to ask and accept it. I would hope that most companies would be sympathetic to your circumstances but equally they are a business and it’s not unreasonable for them to expect employees to be in work for the majority of the time.

A lot of absence policies work across a rolling 12-months period so hopefully in 6 months time you’ll be off the trigger list.

Have a read of the policies - it’s likely an automatic trigger based on number of events or total time.