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Work out how many weeks of Neonatal Care Leave a stay in neonatal care actually buys, when the leave can be taken, and the deadline for using it.
Everything hangs off this date: the 28 days to get into care, and the 68 weeks to use the leave.
The care has to take place in Great Britain. Northern Ireland has not adopted the scheme, so an employee whose baby is cared for there does not build up this leave.
Neonatal Care Leave earned
0weeks
Two quick steps: when the baby was born, then each stay in neonatal care. The entitlement is one week for every 7 full continuous days of care, up to 12 weeks, and the counting rules are fussier than they look. The answer appears here with a step by step timeline.
Neonatal care leave and pay, handled on the payrun
Moonworkers tracks the weeks earned against each stay, keeps the Tier 1 and Tier 2 windows straight, opens the pay on the right payrun and files the recovery through your EPS.
The newest of the statutory leaves, and the one with the most counting rules. Three of them decide the answer.
Step 1
The stay has to begin within 28 days of the birth, counted from the first full day after it. A stay that starts later earns nothing at all, whatever its length.
Step 2
One week of leave for each 7 full continuous days, counted from the day after admission. Each stay is measured on its own, and the total is capped at 12 weeks.
Step 3
Short notice and separate blocks while the baby is in care and for the week after. After that, one continuous block with proper written notice, and all of it inside 68 weeks of the birth.
See also the maternity leave entitlement calculator and the paternity leave entitlement calculator, since this leave sits on top of both.
One week for every 7 full continuous days the baby spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. Ten days in care still buys only one week, because the entitlement is earned in whole 7-day blocks rather than day by day.
Any employee who is a parent of a baby born on or after 6 April 2025, where the baby goes into neonatal care within 28 days of birth and stays for at least 7 full continuous days. It is a day-one right, so there is no length of service test for the leave itself.
From the day after the baby is admitted. If a baby is admitted on Sunday 20 April, the 7 full days finish at midnight on Sunday 27 April and the first day the parent can take leave is Monday 28 April. Nothing at all is available during that first week, because the entitlement is earned in arrears.
The stay only counts if it begins within 28 days of the birth, counted from the first full day after it. A readmission after that window buys nothing, however long it lasts, which catches people out when a baby goes back into hospital in the second month.
Tier 1 covers the time while the baby is in neonatal care and the week after it ends. Leave can be taken then at short notice, in separate blocks of a week or more. Tier 2 is everything after that: the remaining leave has to be taken in one continuous block, with 15 days’ notice for a single week and 28 days’ for two or more.
68 weeks from the baby’s date of birth. The whole period of leave has to start and finish inside that window, and anything not taken by then is lost.
No, it sits on top. A mother already on maternity leave normally takes it in Tier 2, tagged on at the end, because maternity leave cannot be stopped and restarted without losing what is left of it.
Each stay is counted on its own, so days from two short stays cannot be added together to reach a week. With twins, a stretch where both babies are in care at the same time earns one week, not one per baby, but stays that do not overlap are counted separately.
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