Disrupted adoption leave form

Where an employee has started adoption leave, the adoption placement may be disrupted during that leave. Employees can complete our form to let you know about the disrupted placement.

Adoption leave request

An employee can use our Adoption Leave Request Form to apply for statutory adoption leave where a child is to be newly placed with them for adoption, and they can choose to start their leave from the date of the child’s adoption placement or from a fixed date which can be up to 14 days before the expected date of placement. You should then respond to their notification of adoption leave plans in writing within 28 days by sending them our Acknowledgement of Notification of Adoption Leave Letter.

Disrupted adoption placement

In most cases, the employee will then start their adoption leave as planned and it will run for up to 52 weeks, comprising 26 weeks’ ordinary adoption leave (OAL) and 26 weeks’ additional adoption leave (AAL). However, occasionally, the adoption placement may be disrupted after the employee has already started their adoption leave. In this scenario, the legislation provides that where the employee is subsequently notified that the placement won’t be made after all, or the child dies or is returned to the adoption agency after being placed for adoption, the employee’s adoption leave period will end eight weeks after the end of the week (beginning with a Sunday) in which:

• the employee is notified that the placement won’t be made,
• the child dies, or
• the child is returned to the adoption agency.

Where the employee is on OAL and has less than eight weeks to go before their OAL ends, they’ll be entitled to as much AAL as is required to ensure their adoption leave ends eight weeks after the disrupting event. However, where the employee is on AAL and they have less than eight weeks’ AAL remaining when the disrupting event occurs, their AAL will still end on the expiry of the 26 weeks’ AAL.

Form content

Our Disrupted Adoption Leave Form enables an employee to provide notice to you that their adoption leave has been disrupted in one of the three ways outlined above. It also sets out the legal position relating to their being required to return to work after eight weeks. Do be sensitive if the disrupting event is the death of the child and be prepared to accept verbal notification from the employee in this scenario as there’s no statutory requirement for the notice to be in writing.