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Increase the Joy: Improving Shared Parental Leave

This position paper is supported by twelve professional and voluntary sector organisations with an interest in family and work policy.

Working Families’ position paper sets out four simple reforms that would help more families benefit from SPL and ‘increase the joy’.  These are:

  1. Making SPL a day one right, open to all employees from the start of their employment (as maternity leave is for mothers)
  2. Extending SPL to self-employed parents, as proposed in Tracy Brabin MP’s Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Extension) Bill
  3. Allowing fathers that have been made redundant to retain their Shared Parental Pay and;
  4. Permitting parents to opt for SPL rather than maternity leave, after the death of their child.
Download the publication PDF