Nursery World - Government to introduce paid neonatal leave

The Government is planning to introduce paid neonatal leave for working parents of premature babies.

The plan is for paid leave to match time spent in neonatal care

The Government is planning to introduce paid neonatal leave for working parents of premature babies.

Currently, working parents of a premature newborn child in hospital have to take annual leave to spend time with them, rather than returning to work.

Every year, more than 100,000 families have a baby or babies born needing specialist, and often life-saving, neonatal care.

Despite one in seven babies requiring neonatal care in the UK, some for many weeks or months, current parental leave laws offer no flexibility to account for this.

The Government’s proposal would introduce a Neonatal Leave and Pay entitlement, which would allow every employed parent – mothers, fathers and partners – to receive one week of paid leave for every week their baby is in neonatal care, subject to qualifying conditions.

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