A day-one right to parental bereavement leave will give all employed parents the right to two weeks’ leave if they lose a child under the age of 18 or suffer a stillbirth from 24 weeks of pregnancy. They will also be able to claim pay for this period, subject to eligibility criteria.
The workplace right was enshrined in law under the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018 and is expected to come into force in 2020.
“There can be few worse life experiences than the loss of a child and while most employers treat their staff with dignity and compassion when this tragedy occurs, all too often we have heard stories of grieving parents being forced back to work too early,” said Will Quince MP.
“I am delighted that parents in this awful situation will now have the protection of paid leave enshrined in law, and we should be very proud that the UK now has one of the best worker’s rights in this area in the world.”
A survey carried out by Child Bereavement UK in 2016 found that, 22 per cent of British adults who were employed at the time they were bereaved of a close family member said they did not feel supported by their employer.
Overall, the charity revealed that, 10,061 babies, children and young people (under the age of 25) died in the UK in 2016 – 28 every day, while 3,430 babies were stillborn – more than nine babies every day.
Currently there is no legal requirement to provide paid leave to grieving parents. They do, however, have a day-one right to take “a reasonable amount” of unpaid time off work to deal with an emergency, which includes the death of a dependent. There is no set definition of “reasonable”, which can lead to disagreements between employers and employees about the appropriate length of leave.
The introduction of the parental bereavement leave bill came about as a result of years of campaigning. Lucy Herd from Jack’s Rainbow explained that when she started the campaign eight years ago after the death of her son Jack, she hoped that a change would happen in his memory.
“Knowing that eight years of campaigning has helped create legislation to ensure bereaved parents are protected in the future is such a wonderful feeling and I am so grateful to all those involved,” said Herd.
