Taking time off
It doesn’t matter how good you are at multi-tasking, you can’t be in two places at once. Now that you have kids, there will be times when you need to take time off work. The good news is that you are allowed to, provided it is an emergency. This includes if your child gets ill or sent home from school, or if the person who usually cares for them unexpectedly can't look after them.
What can I do if my kids get ill?
You have 2 possible options, depending on how much time you need and the reason why you need to take time off.
If you are an employee (which most people who have a regular job are), you can take unpaid time off to look after your child in an emergency, or to arrange for someone else to look after them. This is called time off for dependants. It doesn't matter how long you have worked for your boss and the illness does not need to be serious. But the amount of time you can take off is limited to you just sorting out the emergency. You would need to let your boss know that you need the time off and why as soon as possible, so you should call or email him.
If you need to look after a child yourself for more than a few days, you should consider parental leave instead. If you are an employee and have worked for your organisation for over a year, you can take up to 13 weeks parental leave off for each child that you have under the age of 5, or under 18 if they have a disability, or that you adopted less than 5 years ago. You must take all the leave before the child reaches 5, or within 5 years of them being placed with you for adoption. However, you can only take a maximum of 4 weeks in any one year.
There is no limit to the number of times you can do this (provided you really do need to), and you can take as long as you need to deal with the emergency or arrange extra care (this would usually be one or two days). You also don't need to make the time up.
The only downside is that you aren't usually entitled to be paid for this time. So if you are offered the chance to make the time up and you can manage it, it would probably be better to do that and save your bank balance.
Some people can also take longer periods off to look after their child. Your child needs to be under 5 years old, or under 18 if they are disabled, or you must have adopted them less than 5 years ago. And you must have worked for your boss for more than a year. If you are in this position, you can take up to 4 weeks off each year for each child, as long as you don't take more than 13 weeks off for each child in total.
This longer leave is also usually unpaid, and has to be taken a week at a time unless your child is disabled. You might not get all your perks while you're on leave either - this might include payments to your pension or use of a company car.
When you come back, you should come back to your job. If you've taken more than 4 weeks, and its not possible for them to give you your job back, they have to give you another job with the same pay and perks as you used to have.
You can't be sacked, passed over for promotion, or treated unfairly because you took time off to look after your children in one of these ways. This would be discrimination and is illegal. If you are sacked without notice while on part-time leave, you will have a right to be paid full time notice pay based on your normal salary.
You can only take this longer leave if you have something called 'parental responsibility' so you might not be able to do this if you are a stepparent. (All mums and adoptive parents have parental responsibility, so do civil partners of mums. Dads have 'parental responsibility' if they are married to the mum, or if they are named on the birth certificate if the birth has been registered since December 2003. Stepparents will only have parental responsibility if they have been given it by the court).
