6. Family and Commmunity Service and Personal Carers Leave

6.1 General

a) Temporary teachers can utilise family and community service leave to meet a range of family activities and community service responsibilities. This could include a need to respond to an emergency situation or in the event of planned absences for family and community service responsibilities where some advance notice is given.

b) Family and community service leave to credit may be granted for family and community activities and responsibilities for which the temporary teacher certifies that there is sufficient need to absent themselves from work.

c) Each temporary engagement attracts a pro rata amount of the three day annual family and community service leave entitlement based on the expected period of the engagement and the days worked per week in the engagement.

d) Alternatively, the entitlement is calculated as one days family and community service leave for each completed 12 months of temporary service, less any family and community service leave taken as a temporary teacher.

e) Where family and community service leave has been exhausted, additional paid family and community service leave of up to two days may be granted on a discrete "per occasion" basis to a temporary teacher on the death of a family member. For the purposes of this section a "family member" means a class of person as defined in Section 6.2 h).

f) Temporary teachers who apply for a period of leave that exceeds the maximum entitlement to family and community service leave may be granted leave without pay or long service leave to credit.

g) Family and community service leave will be available only during a period of temporary engagement.

6.2 Use of Sick Leave to Care for Dependants

a) When family and community service leave has been exhausted, a temporary teacher with responsibilities to a class of person defined in 6.2 h) who needs their care and support shall be entitled to use the existing balance of:

b) The Director-General may, in exceptional circumstances, make a grant of additional sick leave. In these circumstances the grant of any further leave is limited to a temporary teacher's cumulative sick leave balance minus leave granted under 6.2 a).

In determining whether additional leave may be granted, factors to be taken into consideration will include:

d) The temporary teacher has the right to choose the method by which the grounds for leave are established, that is, by production of either a medical certificate or statutory declaration.

e) The temporary teacher is not required to state the exact nature of the relevant illness on either a medical certificate or statutory declaration.

f) A temporary teacher shall, wherever practicable, give the Department notice prior to the absence of the intention to take leave, the name of the person requiring care and their relationship to the temporary teacher, the reasons for taking such leave and the estimated length of absence. If it is not practicable for the temporary teacher to give prior notice of absence, the temporary teacher shall notify the Department by telephone of such absence at the first opportunity on the day of absence.

g) In normal circumstances, a temporary teacher will not be granted personal carer's leave where another person has taken leave to care for the same person.

h) The entitlement to use sick leave is subject to:

a spouse of the temporary teacher; or

1. "relative" means a person related by blood, marriage, affinity or Aboriginal kinship structures;

2. "affinity" means a relationship that one spouse or partner has to relatives of the other; and

3. "household" means a family group living in the same domestic dwelling.

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005