taking day off to care for sick child?

[busymum]

what do you do if your child is ill and you need to take a day off work to look after them? do you take AL or parental leave or do your employers give you special leave for that? I'm just curious as my boss has made a dig, probably just in bad mood, but she claims if workload does not fit with leave requirements then we would need to figure out how to manage it...... How on earth would anyone know how often their children are likely to be sick? Have heard about new legislatuion to protect from this kind of thing - discrimination by proxy, anyone know about it? or had similar experience at work? I have only had 2 days off for a childs sickness in 10 months

sorry just a bit cross on recieving this on a Sunday......

[Keef]

My wife gets a certain number of special leave days (think it's only 3 or 4), that work on a rolling year. She works for Guy's & Tommy's NHS trust.

[Chippy Minton]

All employees, whether part-time or full-time, and regardless of how long they have been in the job, have a right to take ?reasonable? time off work to deal with unexpected problems or illness of dependants (for example, children or elderly parents).

Unfortunately this ?dependant care leave? is unpaid, unless your employer agrees otherwise. The amount of this leave you can take is limited to what might be deemed ?reasonable? although what is reasonable is not defined in law. In practice, the Department of Trade and Industry has said that, in most cases, one or two days every time leave is taken should be enough.

[venice]

My employer does not give me time off if my child is sick, only if I am.

If my child is ill then I have to take a days leave

I always used to make sure that I had a couple of days not booked in the year to cover emergencies like this.

Mine are a bit older now and I have more flexibility to work from home so generally can cover most sick days like this

[snss75]

I think it depends on the employer to certain extent. Some places that I know of put it down as the employee's sick leave, i.e. don't differentiate between you & your child (which can be good if there's no limit to number of paid sick leave you can take in a year) and I even know someone who has to take it as holiday which I think is outrageous (is that even legal?). I think I'm quite lucky as my employer marks it down as "dependant care leave" which is generally paid even though they say it's discretionary. As there is no stated limit for the number of days one can take as dependant care leave I suppose they will start discussing taking it unpaid if the days keep piling up. I'm no legal expert but I do think that as a parent you are legally entitled to take time off to care for a sick child but I suppose the employer doesn't have to pay you for it? Correct me if I'm rong anyone. I have to say that I'd have a serious issue with your employer as well, not much you can do if your child is ill (6), it's difficult enough without getting the attitude about it at work...

[womanofdulwich]

only done this once ( in 18 years),as looked on very dimly by work colleagues. In fact I came in to central london in car with sick child on back seat with sick bucket, took my work and brought it home. quite often sick children are much easier to look after at home and work than if they are well. I really think it depends on the work culture where you are. of course annual leave is very precious. would rather take unpaid if i could.

I think you need an army of back up carers/ family. But working at weekends to make up is always a good one. I know this is not always possible for everyone. I think you have to share this with your partner where you can.

[Monkey]

I have no idea what the legal situation is but if your job does not require you to be "on site" how about working from home?

My baby has been ill on only a few occasions since I went back to work in January and each time I just rang my boss and said I would be working from home. I did more work in the evening to make up for time spent at the gp, feeding etc... Her being so flexible means I am not looking to move jobs so we're both happy.

As your manager sounds a bit like a *****, you could talk to the other mums in your company and find out what they do. Might give you some "ammunition."

Good luck.

[Smiler]

We worked out that our daughter was sick for a total of five working weeks in about 15 months of being at nursery. We split the time away from work between the two of us as we had no back-up care. Mr Smiler's boss let him work from home, but since it is impossible to work and look after a toddler he ended up working late at night and at weekends. I took unplanned annual leave.

Legal rights are limited I think, as others have said it seems to come down to one's boss.

[Gubodge]

I take it as annual leave. I think it is possible to apply for special paid leave, but I would consider that more for something like hospitalisation or a serious medium term illness, rather than the odd day here or there with a tummy bug or chicken pox.

[busymum]

actually i've just checked our company intranet and it states

Requests for special leave for urgent family reasons..... e.g. where a child or other dependent falls ill, will also be given sympathetic consideration, including granting special leave with pay up to a maximum of 2 days. Usually in such circumstances 2 days should allow the member of staff to make alternative arrangements.

I've got 2 kids so 2 days in 10 months off is not at all bad, I'm now worried about them being ill again, there is so much going round at the moment and nursery is a breading ground for germs. i'm sorry to hear that so many of you have to use your A.L for this, especially 5 working weeks of it!!

ps I work for public sector org and I have heard that H.R can claim staff sick days back from the government! so there is no way they would let me take it as a staff sick day, that would be breaking the law

I actually find it impossible doing any work from home with the children about, I find it hard enough checking messages on EDF

I'm quite concerned about this threat to "manage it" I'm not sure what this could mean?

[Fuschia]

BM: i think they are being over zealous.

Although your employer (like many in the public sector) has quite a generous policy for leave for sick dependents, it does rather assume that you have someone you can call on (like grandparents living nearby) when sadly that just isn't the case for many people.

If you are getting hassled over this, it's straying into sex discrimination and I would think about involving your union.

[Saila]

you sound lucky! we always seem to catch it too so that solves the sick-day problem

new thread - how do you look after a sick child, when you're sick yourself?

[womanofdulwich]

if they are actually sick they are quite easy to look after- too tired to run around the house and should sleep most of the time. it is when they perk up -at about 3pm - in time for childrens tv- quite handy actually!

[bawdy-nan]

You are legally entitled to take time off to care for dependents but your employer does not have to pay you (though they might)

see here:

direct gov website

[Pickle]

Reading this post makes me appreciate how lucky I am... as a stay at home Mum there have been quite a number of occasions where my hubby has taken days off to look after the kids when I've been sick - his firm don't even blink at it, all of the senior management have small children so it's almost part of the company culture to be able to take the time off when needed.