Response to disrupted adoption leave notice

Where an employee has given you notice that their adoption leave has been disrupted, you can use our letter to respond to them to let them know what happens now as regards their adoption leave.

Disruption of adoption leave

Assuming they meet eligibility requirements and comply with notification obligations, an employee who is the sole or primary adopter of a child adopted within the UK is entitled to take one year’s adoption leave, made up of 26 weeks’ ordinary adoption leave and 26 weeks’ additional adoption leave. The employee can still choose to return to work on an earlier date, provided they give you at least eight weeks’ notice of their early return date – see our Reply to Request for Early Return from Adoption Leave. However, there are also circumstances where they may have no choice but to return to work early. These circumstances are where the adoption placement is disrupted, and this can occur in any one of the following three situations:

• the employee began a period of adoption leave before the date on which they expected the adopted child to be placed with them, but then they’re subsequently notified that the adoption placement won’t be made after all
• the child dies during the employee’s adoption leave
• the child is returned to the adoption agency after being placed with the employee for adoption during their adoption leave.

The employee can use our Disrupted Adoption Leave Form to notify you of the relevant disrupting event and its date.

Consequences of disruption

The law says that, where a placement for adoption is disrupted, the employee’s adoption leave will then cease eight weeks after the end of the week in which they were notified that the placement would not be made, or in which the child died or was returned to the adoption agency (as applicable). A week for these purposes starts on a Sunday. However, where the disrupting event occurs within eight weeks of the scheduled end of the employee’s adoption leave, their adoption leave will still terminate on its scheduled end date in the normal way. Our Response to Disrupted Adoption Leave Notice sets out this legal position and you can choose which paragraph applies depending on whether the employee’s adoption leave will now end early or still on its scheduled end date. If the employee’s adoption leave ends early, then any entitlement to statutory adoption pay (SAP) will cease too.

Parental bereavement leave

Where the adopted child has died, the employee may also be entitled to parental bereavement leave and pay, so we’ve inserted an optional paragraph briefly covering that.