Neonatal Care Leave and Pay

Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act

Bliss has campaigned for and supported a new entitlement to additional paid leave from work when a baby is in neonatal care, which will be available to parents who qualify from 6 April 2025.

Both parents will be allowed up to 12 weeks of paid leave, in addition to other leave entitlements such as maternity and paternity leave.

Neonatal leave will be available to employees from their first day in a new job and will apply to both parents of babies who are admitted into hospital up to the age of 28 days, and who have a continuous stay in hospital of 7 full days or more.

• Families find their costs go up just as their income falls because of starting parental leave. The average additional cost, for families responding to a Bliss survey was £405 per week while their baby was in hospital.

• In 7 in 10 families with a neonatal stay over 4 weeks, at least one parent (usually dads and non-birthing parents) return to work while their baby is still sick in hospital.

• Mothers and birthing parents use up much of their entitlement before their babies are home and often return to work earlier than intended due to financial pressure.
• Some mothers and birthing parents have no choice but to leave their jobs to care for their babies, who may have ongoing appointments and follow-up during their first year as a result of their neonatal stay.

Alongside parents and other charities, Bliss has campaigned for many years to give parents extra leave and pay when their baby is in neonatal care. As a result, the Conservative Party included the proposal in their 2019 manifesto. However, when the Bill they had planned to use to bring it in was not introduced as promised we started campaigning again, this time to get a backbench MP to support it.

As part of that campaign, we brought together over 30 charities, unions and professional bodies to call for the new parental leave entitlement, and 3,000 campaigners emailed their MPs to ask for their support. Following our campaigning, the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by SNP MP Stuart McDonald in 2022. Read what we shared with MPs about our campaign (PDF).

Throughout the campaign, we worked with MPs, parents, civil servants, and employment specialists to make sure the new law will work for the families that need it. The Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act achieved Royal Assent on 24 May 2023 and will be implemented from 6 April 2025.

While nearly 60,000 parents will be eligible for neonatal care leave and pay every year, parents who are self-employed or who have a worker employment status will not qualify.

We continue to campaign for employment support for parents who won't benefit from the new entitlement. In October, we published a briefing on this issue to help us take action on this issue in Parliament. Read the policy briefing here.

Get updated on our campaigns and tangible actions you can take to help by joining our campaign network.

As an employer

While parents won’t be able to claim neonatal care leave and pay until April 2025, employers can introduce the policy more quickly for their employees.

We have collaborated with HR specialists and employers to provide guidance on how you can provide this vital support now.

As an employee

We know that for many families this change won’t happen quickly enough.

You can use our letter of support to help encourage your employer to make a difference to families now.