Neonatal care leave and pay – update

In January we published an article outlining the new right to neonatal care leave and neonatal care pay which comes into force on 6 April 2025.

Neonatal care leave will be available to parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care up to 28 days old and who have a continuous stay in hospital of seven full days or longer. Eligible parents are entitled to one week of neonatal care leave for each qualifying week their child spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. This leave is on top of any other leave they are entitled to, including maternity and paternity leave.

Employees may also be eligible for statutory neonatal care pay if they have a minimum of 26 weeks continuous service and earnings that meet the lower earnings limit.

The Neonatal Care Leave and Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 2025 and the Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (General) Regulations 2025 have now been approved by Parliament and published. They set out the substantive detail of the new right.

The new right applies to babies born on or after the 6 April 2025.

CEFM are in the process of writing a Neonatal care leave and pay policy which will be on the CEFMi website soon.

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The maternity, paternity, adoption section within the personnel section of our CEFMi website contains model policies and related model letters and forms. Get a free trial of CEFMi – a comprehensive resource for school managers containing over 7,000 pages of text, including over 170 policies written specifically for schools.