Dealing with a death

[Rachael]

Regardless of what your contracts state, everyone has emergency situations or times when they aren't available to work sort notice. If you had stomach flu, likely you'd close and remain closed for a couple of days to ensure the children didn't get it. That's a risk parents take with in home.

For a funeral, it would be some pretty heartless clients who weren't willing to be a bit flexible. I think if you have paid personal days/vacation/sick days, then you should be able to use some of those for this event. If not, I don't think it's unreasonable to close without pay - few could argue with that.

I have 10 personal days a year in my contract which would over sick, vacation and any other reason for unavailability.

[MsBell]

My mother fell ill, and was hospitalized for three days before she passed. I closed for those three days, my mother did not want a funeral, but wanted a memorial party when we were ready. All the families I had in care were 100% supportive. They all paid for those three days, even though I don't require pay on my days off, a couple came over with homemade dinners to share, and all of them made donations to the memorial that was held a month later and raised money for the Cancer society.
I think all my families went above and beyond, but I cant imagine any family having an issue when their provider has to deal with such a loss.

[MonkeyPrincess]

I had to deal with it when my grandmother passed away last year. I took my unpaid time off as needed- about 3 days (plus a weekend). None of my families had a problem. my grandmother was not well, and we were advised that she wouldn't be with us much longer so my families had the chance to make arrangements with their back up care.

My advice is for you to take the time off that you need. If a death is unexpected, it's going to take several days, even weeks for it to settle in. Even if it is expected it takes a few days to get back into the right mind frame. Don't rush to get back to work the next day.

I would hope that your families are supportive of you in this time. This is just one of the reasons why families are supposed to have back up care, we don't always know when an emergency can happen.

Sorry for your loss