With Father’s Day falling on 21st June, this is a timely opportunity to highlight three family-friendly rights that fathers in your workplace may rely on to help balance their work and caring responsibilities.
Being aware of these and other family friendly rights can help your business to manage such situations appropriately. So, what is it helpful to know about:
- Statutory paternity leave
- Statutory parental leave
- Dependant care leave
Statutory Paternity Leave
Statutory paternity leave can apply in both birth and adoption cases, below we are focussing on birth cases. In this situation statutory paternity leave is two weeks of leave that can be taken when a child is born, it can:
- Start on the date of birth or later, provided it is taken within 52 weeks of the birth. There is no entitlement to extra leave if more than one child is born at the same time.
- Be taken as either two consecutive weeks, two separate one-week periods, or a single week if the employee does not wish to take the full entitlement.
If your employee wants to take statutory paternity leave, there are some eligibility criteria they need to meet and they should give you the required notices. In birth cases, the employee must be the biological father of the child or the mother’s spouse, civil partner or partner and have or expect to have the main responsibility for the upbringing of the child (apart from any responsibility of the mother) if the individual is not the father of the child. The employee must also be taking the leave to care for the child or to support the child’s mother.
For babies born on or after 6th April 2026, there is no longer a minimum length of service required to qualify for statutory paternity leave (although there is for statutory paternity pay).
Statutory Parental Leave
Statutory parental leave is one of the family-friendly rights that can easily be overlooked, as managers do not always deal with requests for it very often. To help you respond appropriately if a request arises in your business, here are some key points to keep in mind:
- Parental leave is a period of unpaid leave that can be taken by an employee to care for their child if they have parental responsibility for them. It can be exercised until a child’s 18th birthday.
- Each eligible parent can take up to 18 weeks parental leave for each child. They are limited to taking no more than four weeks in a single year for each child. Unless they are caring for a disabled child, parental leave must be taken in blocks of whole weeks.
- Employees need to give a minimum of 21 days’ notice of the time off they wish to take.
- There is no longer a minimum length of service required for an employee to be entitled to parental leave.
Unusually for a family friendly right, it is possible to postpose parental leave in certain circumstances providing it’s done correctly. If you think the operation of your business would be unduly disrupted if your employee took parental leave at the time they have requested to take it, you should get in touch for specific advice on your situation.
Dependant Care Leave
Employees may sometimes face personal emergencies, if the emergency involves a dependant, such as a child, bear in mind they may be entitled to a reasonable amount of unpaid time off to deal with it.
In brief, dependant care leave can be taken:
- To make care arrangements for the provision of care for a dependant who is ill or injured;
- To deal with the unexpected disruption, termination or breakdown of arrangements for the care of a dependant;
- To deal with an unexpected incident which involves the employee’s child during school (or another educational establishment’s) hours;
- To provide assistance if a dependant falls ill, gives birth, is injured or assaulted;
- In consequence of the death of a dependant.
Employees do not need to give advance notice for dependant care leave. Where possible, they should follow the usual absence reporting procedure; if not, they should let you know as soon as reasonably possible why they are absent and how long they expect to be off work.
Employees may bring a claim in the employment tribunal if they are dismissed or suffer a detriment because they have taken dependant care leave. If you are dealing with a possible dependant care leave issue in your business and would like advice, please get in touch.