Help maternity grant or smp just left work and found out im pregnant

[pinotgrigiolarge]

was coming up for 6 months prob, left my part time job 3 weeks ago, now im not sure if i would be entitled to anything please advise, thank you. Last job before that was Dec 2007that was part time so have made NI contributions how does it work?.

[BertieBotts]

Oh I see - sorry, I read that as she is just coming up for 6 months pregnant, I suppose it is more likely she means she has been in that job for 6 months

I suggest signing up with some temping agencies in that case.

[flowerybeanbag]

Bertie the OP says she was just coming up for 6 months - in other words she hadn't done 6 months yet. She left 3 weeks ago, prior to finding out she was pregnant, so she is unlikely to qualify yet and will need to do a few more weeks' work somewhere.

[BertieBotts]

Sorry for brief post earlier, was still waking up (am slow in the mornings!) - it sounds like you probably do qualify for MA if you have been working for at least 6 months. The qualifying period includes 6 months before pregnancy as flowerybeanbag says, so even if you left your job very early on in pregnancy you would be fine as long as you were working for 6 weeks beforehand.

I think there is a minimum number of hours each week which you have to have worked for it to count, but it's really low, you could work 1-2 days a week and it would still count as working for that week.

[pinotgrigiolarge]

Thank you so much for your advice, its greatly appreciated xx I will look into it.

[flowerybeanbag]

To get Maternity Allowance you need to have 26 weeks employment in the period including the nine months of your pregnancy and the six months before that.

So at the moment you haven't worked enough to get it, but if you can get a few weeks work during your pregnancy, that should be enough for you to qualify.

See here all about it.

[BertieBotts]

It will be Maternity Allowance if you are entitled to anything - look on www.direct.gov.uk