A right that began in April 2025 and that many employers still have no policy for. Work out how many weeks your baby’s care has earned, and what they are worth.
Neonatal care has to begin within 28 days of the birth for the leave to apply. Care that starts later does not count, however serious it is.
A growing number of employers top neonatal care pay up to full pay. It is new enough that many policies do not mention it at all — worth asking rather than assuming.
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If your baby needed neonatal care, you can take one week of leave for every 7 full and continuous days they spent in it, up to 12 weeks — paid at £194.32 a week, or 90% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower. The care has to begin within 28 days of the birth and last at least seven days, and the baby has to have been born on or after 6 April 2025, when the right came in.
The seven-day arithmetic is blunter than most people expect. Only whole blocks count: thirteen days in neonatal care earns one week, not two, and the leftover six days are simply discarded. Six days on their own earns nothing at all. It is worth working out the actual number before you plan around it, because the boundary falls in an unintuitive place.
This is the part worth being certain about. Neonatal care leave is additional to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave. It is not carved out of them, and taking it costs you nothing anywhere else.
For a birth parent that means 52 weeks of maternity leave plus the neonatal weeks on top — a three-week stay takes you to 55 weeks of leave and 42 paid weeks rather than 39. The neonatal leave is taken at the end, once maternity leave is used up. For a partner the difference is starker still: statutory paternity leave is two weeks, and those two weeks routinely run out while a baby is still in hospital. That was the situation the legislation was written to fix, and it can take a partner from two weeks to as many as fourteen.
And unlike adoption, where a couple must choose which one of them claims, each eligible parent has their own separate entitlement. Up to 12 weeks each, assessed independently, even where both parents work for the same employer. There is no single pot to divide.
Neonatal care leave is a day-one right for employees — no qualifying period, however new you are. Statutory Neonatal Care Pay is not: it needs 26 weeks’ continuous employment and average weekly earnings of at least £129. The same split now applies to paternity and adoption, and it means a recent joiner can be entitled to every week of the time off and paid for none of it.
What makes neonatal pay fiddlier than the others is that the date those 26 weeks are counted to moves. If you are also getting maternity or paternity pay it is the 15th week before the due date; if you are getting adoption pay it is the matching week; and if you are getting none of them, it is simply the week before the neonatal care started. That last case is the one general guidance tends to skip over, and it is the one the calculator above is careful about.
That is common rather than suspicious. The entitlement is new enough that a great many staff handbooks do not mention it, and plenty of HR teams meet it for the first time when someone asks. It is a statutory right, so it does not depend on their having written a policy — GOV.UK and Acas both publish guidance aimed squarely at employers in that position.
Two practical points. Ask whether they will pay above the statutory rate: because there is no established norm yet, some employers are topping it up to full pay and have never had occasion to say so. And take the leave as neonatal care leave rather than as annual or compassionate leave even where the money is the same, because it carries statutory protection that a discretionary policy does not. All of it has to be used within 68 weeks of the birth.
You get one week of leave for every 7 full and continuous days your baby spends in neonatal care, up to a maximum of 12 weeks. The care has to start within 28 days of the birth and run for at least seven days before any entitlement exists at all.
The part that catches people out is that only whole 7-day blocks count. Thirteen days in neonatal care earns one week, not two. Twenty days earns two weeks, not three. The remainder is simply discarded, and six days earns nothing whatsoever. It is a blunt rule, and it is worth knowing before you plan around a number.
£194.32 a week, or 90% of your average weekly earnings if that is lower, for however many weeks you have earned — up to 12. It is the same flat rate as maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay.
Worth noting: GOV.UK’s own employee-facing page was still quoting the 2025/26 figure of £187.18 when this calculator was built. The April 2026 uprating to £194.32 is confirmed in the employer guidance and by Acas.
No, and this is the most important thing about it. Neonatal care leave is in addition to maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave. It is not carved out of them and taking it does not reduce them.
So a birth parent with a baby in neonatal care for three weeks can have 52 weeks of maternity leave plus three weeks on top — 55 weeks in total, with 42 weeks of it paid rather than 39. A partner whose two weeks of paternity leave ran out while the baby was still in hospital can add up to 12 more. If you are already on maternity or adoption leave, the neonatal leave is taken at the end of that entitlement rather than in the middle of it.
Yes. Each eligible parent has their own separate entitlement — up to 12 weeks each, assessed independently. That holds even where both parents work for the same employer.
This is the opposite of adoption, where only one of a couple can take the leave. Here there is no choosing between you and no sharing of a single pot. Birth parents, fathers, spouses and partners of the birth parent, adoptive parents and intended parents under a surrogacy arrangement can all qualify in their own right.
They are two separate questions with two different answers, which is where most of the confusion sits.
Neonatal care leave is a day-one right. If you are an employee, you can take it however new you are to the job. There is no qualifying period at all.
The pay is not. Statutory Neonatal Care Pay needs 26 weeks’ continuous employment with the same employer by the end of the relevant week, plus average weekly earnings of at least £129 over the eight weeks before it. So a recent joiner can be entitled to every week of the leave and paid for none of it.
It is the date the 26 weeks of service are counted to, and it moves depending on what other family pay you are receiving:
That last case is the one to watch, because it is the one general guidance tends to skip. If you are not on any other family leave, your service is measured to the week before your baby went into care.
Three things count: care in hospital; medical care after leaving hospital, where it is under a consultant and involves ongoing visits or checks; and palliative or end-of-life care. The care must begin within 28 days of the birth.
The right applies to babies born on or after 6 April 2025. If your baby was born before that date, the entitlement does not exist however long the stay was — the legislation is not retrospective.
All of it must be taken within 68 weeks of the birth — just under 16 months. Anything not taken by then is lost. There are two phases:
In tier 1, notice before you are due to start work on the first day of your absence — or as soon as is reasonably practicable, which recognises that neonatal admissions are rarely planned.
In tier 2, the notice is longer and must be in writing: at least 15 days for a single week, and at least 28 days for two or more consecutive weeks.
Not under this right — the seven-day threshold is absolute, and six days earns nothing. But other things may help:
Yes. Statutory Neonatal Care Pay counts as earnings, so income tax, National Insurance and any pension contributions come off it as they would from salary. Because a block of it replaces higher-paid weeks partway through the tax year, PAYE will usually have collected too much tax by that point — the correction normally comes back automatically through payroll as reduced deductions rather than needing a claim.
That is common, and not a reason to assume you have no rights. The entitlement began in April 2025 and a great many staff handbooks have not caught up — plenty of HR teams are meeting it for the first time when an employee asks.
It is a statutory right, so it does not depend on your employer having a policy. Point them at the GOV.UK employer guide or the Acas guidance, both written for exactly this situation. It is also worth asking whether they will pay more than the statutory rate: because the right is new, some employers are choosing to top it up to full pay and have simply never had to say so.
All free and independent:
It is unlawful to treat you badly for taking neonatal care leave, and it carries the same protections as other family leave. If that is happening, take advice quickly — tribunal time limits are short.
Neonatal weeks stack on top of your maternity leave. See what the 39 weeks underneath them are worth after tax.
