The government recently concluded a public consultation exercise which it had opened following up on its presentation of the Children’s Policy Framework for 2024-2030. In this presentation, the Ministry for Social Policy and Children’s Rights put forward the proposal that instead of hours being reduced from the annual leave in cases of children being sick, any absence from work would be reduced from the worker’s sick leave if a medical certificate of the sick family member is provided.

The idea is to allow parents to stay at home with their child if he or she is sick.

In reaction to the government’s presentation, the Malta Employers’ Association (MEA) said that the framework could be a step forward in introducing measures which would benefit children and families, but raised concerns about how such measures would actually function in reality.

The MEA had declared that it would be against any such change as it said that sick leave is meant to be utilised specifically when an employee is unfit for work and should therefore never be used because someone else is sick. The MEA said that such a measure would be impossible to properly control and could potentially result in sick leave abuse. It added that the existence of urgent family leave already covers the situations where this proposed measure would apply, deeming such a change unnecessary.

Contrasting with the MEA’s stance on the matter, the General Workers’ Union had said that it will fight for this measure in the belief that there are circumstances where workers need to and should be able to utilise their sick leave entitlement in order to care for their sick children.

GWU secretary general Josef Bugeja had said that this right is one of several issues which the union advocates for. Bugeja said that nowadays, with parents usually both being in employment, instances where one parent has to stay home to care for the sick children are not unheard of.

The women’s lobby also came out in support of the proposal. Following the MEA’s declaration that it is against the idea, the women’s lobby asked for the government to find a suitable solution for working parents who have to deal with this situation if their children were to fall sick. The lobby put into perspective how the current 15 hours of urgent family leave means that in practice, if a child were to become sick for four days early on in the year, then two parents would run out of the allocated urgent family leave between them for the rest of the year. It continued that simply doubling that time to 30 hours, as was included in the government's Children's Policy Framework 2024-2030 proposals, is a “half-measure” and would not work.

There are several other European countries which have extensive care leave or care allowance measures for situations where workers may have to stay at home to care for a sick child.

For example, Poland offers care allowance for up to 60 days in a calendar year if the worker is taking care of a child under the age of 14. However, the number of allotted days is reduced to 14 in a calendar year if the worker is taking care of a family member over the age of 14. Family members for whom care allowance would apply in this instance, aside from children over the age of 14, are siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, parents-in-law, parents and spouses. The number of available days does not increase if the family has more than one child.

Sweden also has an extensive care allowance mechanism, with workers who need to stay home to care for sick children being eligible to receive compensation for doing so through a system known as “vab”. The maximum number of days available through this mechanism is 120.

Throughout last year in Germany, the country made use of a “childhood sick days” mechanism where parents with statutory health insurance could apply for 30 working days of child sickness benefit, with single parents being able to apply for up to 60 days. In cases involving more children, each parent could not exceed 65 working days through this mechanism, with no more than 130 days for single parents. The child sickness benefit usually covers 90% of lost wages and parents could apply for this benefit through their health insurance company. This mechanism applied to children ages 12 or younger, although this age restriction did not apply to children with disabilities.

The Netherlands’ care leave system is considerably different from what has been detailed so far. It is split between long- and short-term care leave. The Dutch government explains that a worker has the right to short-term care leave which is twice the number of hours they work per week in 12 months, while long-term care leave can take six times their working hours per week in 12 months. This would mean that short-term care leave would allow for 80 hours of leave in 12 months if you work 40 hours per week, while long-term care leave would allow for 240 hours. Employees taking short-term care leave are entitled to receive at least 70% of their salary but do not have the right to a salary during long-term care leave. With that said, employees in the Netherlands may also be entitled to emergency leave which, according to the Dutch government, can last from a few hours to a few days, and the employer continues paying the employee’s salary throughout emergency leave.

These aforementioned countries all have varying care allowance or carers’ leave mechanisms, with some being considerably more extensive than what is present in Malta. For comparison, all employees in Malta have the right to five working days of unpaid leave per year to provide care or support to relatives or household members with serious medical reasons.