As part of our Know your rights campaign, we want to highlight practical options that can help working parents manage the realities of family life. These options sit alongside our continued efforts to improve flexibility and secure fair pay for salaried GPs.
Unpaid parental leave won't be the right solution for everyone, but it is an often-overlooked right that may offer some families another option when trying to balance work and home life.
I am a salaried GP and a mother to three young children.
School holidays: what should be a happy break from the normal routine instead feels overwhelming – another thing to add to my mental load. And that’s because the ask is too much.
Most of us have six weeks’ annual leave per year. That’s not enough to cover the 13 weeks of school holidays, plus the mandatory teacher training days. The pressure increases further when most practices cap how much leave you can take during school holidays.
And quite rightly – everyone has to have their fair share of holiday, and the practice still has to keep running.
If you are lucky enough to have family nearby, that may buy you a day or two. But a lot of us have moved away from family or have moved from abroad, so this support is often very limited.
Out comes the complicated spreadsheet and the hours of research, making sure all variables are accounted for:
Mapping who goes where, for how long, and who is going to do drop-off and pick-up
– Holiday camps not starting until 10am, when work starts at 8am
– Additional costs for ‘wraparound’ care, which still doesn’t cover the full working day
– Multiple drop-offs miles apart at different locations before you have even started driving to work
– The guilt trip: ‘But my friends don’t have to go Mummy, why do I?!’
Any of this sound familiar?
Then come the costs. I work three days a week; my husband is full time. Three days of childcare cost over £550 per week in the holidays. What’s the point in going to work?
There is another option: as part of the Know your rights campaign, we want to highlight unpaid parental leave as an option. It is available to all employees with parental responsibility for a child, rather than to self-employed people or contractors.
This is unpaid, but given the cost of holiday childcare and the stress of the juggle, planned parental leave may help you spend more time with your family and feel more balanced as a result. This type of leave protects your other entitlements, such as annual leave and carer days.
Parental leave is usually taken in full week blocks and is booked at least 21 days in advance, although employers may agree to more flexible arrangements, and different rules apply if your child has a disability.
The benefit to the practice is that, because the leave is unpaid, it may be possible to use that budget for locum cover. You may also feel less stressed while juggling everything, which can make it easier to stay well and engaged at work.
The amount you can take is overall very generous. You are entitled to up to 18 weeks of unpaid parental leave per child, which can be taken at any point up to their 18th birthday. So, for me, with three3 children I am entitled to 54 weeks.
In most cases, you can take up to four weeks of unpaid parental leave per child each year, unless your employer agrees otherwise.
My husband has a completely separate allowance, so he too could have 54 weeks. The reality is we won’t use that much, but it does help ease the pressure.
Not everyone is aware, but it is one of your employment rights.
It won’t fix the chaos of school holidays, but it might just take enough pressure off to make things feel a little more doable.
We will always keep pushing for better pay and better working conditions for salaried GPs. But we also know that, particularly when children are young, time can be just as precious. Time to spend with family, time to be present for the moments that matter, and sometimes simply time to make the juggle a little less exhausting.
Lizzie Schofield is a member of the sessional GPs committee