Do I have to take Annual Leave when my DS is sick?

[oysterpots]

Just back at work a month now, and on Monday DS's nursery called to ask me to pick him up as he was running a temperature.

I vaguely recall there being some kind of carer's allowance where you can take time off to look after sick children without having to use up all your holiday - can anyone help me? Thanks

Parental Leave I think you're talking about

Ah, parental leave has to be given 21 days notice

Parental leave is different. What you mean is emergency compassionate leave for dependents' here, which you are entitled to for this sort of thing. It's unpaid and only for a couple of days. Any more than that and you'd be expected to use the time to sort out alternative arrangements.

If your employer will let you take it as annual leave you're probably better off doing that as emergency leave is unpaid.

Here it comes under compassionate leave.

Check with your employers - where I work we can get paid carers/compassionate leave for these situations

Thanks, I've just sent my boss that link (we are a teeny charity and there's not much in the way of handbooks/policies yet). HOping she might let me have it as paid but not holding my breath, not after the debacle with my maternity pay

Yes. This is why I only have four days of annual leave left (out of 30) due to sickly child who has been in hospital three times this year.

Uh, same here. I send a sarcastic note to HR when I heard about me having to use my annual leave for DS's sickdays that we better not use annual leave for anything as trivial as holiday...