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Every year, 60,000 babies are born premature in the UK, making up 38% of babies requiring admission to specialist Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU).
For premature babies, and babies born at term with health complications, it can be days, weeks or even months before they are able to come home.
This often leaves parents juggling work commitments at a time of intense emotional difficulty when their attention is needed in the NICU, because paternity leave doesn’t cover the time they need.
A NICU stay is an enormous strain on families. The research report ‘After NICU 2021’ found that over half of premature babies were readmitted to hospital after being discharged. Almost 1 in 4 parents were diagnosed with PTSD after a neonatal stay and over three quarters experienced anxiety. 40% of mothers develop postnatal depression following premature births.
Logistically it can be difficult if you have other children at home or additional caring responsibilities, especially if your baby has to be transferred to a unit further away from your home or in a different part of the country, and it can bring an unexpected financial strain with costs such as hospital parking, hotels, childcare for older siblings etc.
Time spent watching a tiny baby in neonatal intensive care simply isn’t maternity or paternity leave, and families need time to adjust and heal when their baby does eventually come home.
Research by The Smallest Things charity suggests that returning to work was not possible for 11% of parents due to their own medical needs and 16% because of their baby’s needs, but employers can help by being supportive and flexible.
That is why The Smallest Things charity is asking employers to support parents and carers of premature babies by extending paid parental leave and signing up to their Employer with Heart 2.0 Charter.
The Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 24 May 2023, providing parents with a right to 12 weeks leave and pay when their baby requires neonatal care in addition to existing parental leave entitlements.
Neonatal leave will be available to employees as a Day One right and will apply to parents of babies who are admitted into hospital up to the age of 28 days, and who have a continuous stay in hospital of seven full days or more, up to a maximum of 12 weeks.
Entitlement to Statutory Neonatal Pay, like other family-related pay rights, will be available to employees who meet continuity of service and minimum earnings tests, to provide both consistency and ease to employers who will administer the entitlement. The leave will be paid at a rate of around £160 per week, up to a maximum of 12 weeks.
However, the new rights will not come into force until April 2025.
Proactive employers who want to get ahead of the regulation and ensure that their employees are fully supported can sign up to the Employer with Heart 2.0 Charter.
The Charter has two basic asks:
- Extend leave for parents and partners who have a premature baby (before 37 weeks gestation) by the number of days a baby is born prior to their due date. This extended leave will be at full pay.
- Support parents returning to work following the birth of a premature baby. Babies born too soon can have ongoing medical needs, requiring regular hospital appointments and check-ups. Consider formal and informal flexible working patterns and offering additional paid or unpaid leave.
Statutory Neonatal Leave and Pay will only cover the time a baby is in hospital. It does not take into account the developmental needs of a baby born prematurely or the ongoing appointments, medical interventions and readmissions to hospital that can occur after coming home from neonatal care. It doesn’t allow additional time for parents to recover once home and to be able to bond with their baby.
As a compassionate, inclusive employer, you can go above and beyond the statutory minimum requirements to offer your staff the support they need at a traumatic time in their lives.
The Smallest Things Charter goes one step further than the statutory requirements in supporting parents emotionally and financially.
At 181st Street, it was particularly important to us to ensure that our staff are fully supported through premature birth and NICU, as our Senior Managing Partner Sian has lived experience of this with her daughter. We became an Employer With Heart and adopted the Smallest Things Charter, extending our policies even further to ensure that they cover babies born at full term who also require a NICU stay.
We’ve extended paid parental leave by the number of days a baby is born before their due date, and/or stays in NICU. We pay this extended leave as full pay and class this as compassionate leave so it doesn’t eat into Maternity, Paternity or Shared Parental Leave allowances.
This article was written by Sian Conway-Wood, Senior Managing Partner 181st Street Communications, Founder of the UK’s largest sustainability community Ethical Hour, UK Government Green Ambassador and Author with Icon Books.
You can connect with Sian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sianconway/