Redundancy During Maternity - Benefits?

BSM2014

Hi Everyone,

My wife was made redundant (due to company closure) at the start of her maternity leave. She was paid her SMP for the 9 months as a lump sum at the point of redundancy and so in Jan-15 she is effectively at the end of SMP and effectively jobless...

What options are available to us? We are concerned that its doing to be difficult for her to find new part time employment , especially that is going to bring in more than the cost of subseqent child care. Would she be entitled to job seekers for instance and if so for how long?

For info ,we recieve no benefits other than child benefit, mainly due to my income exceeding the thresholds as a higher tax rate payer.

Thanks for any help you can give...

Horseunderwater

JSA contributions may br payable for 6 months, but she need to have earned over £5.1k 4 2011/12 & £5.350k for the following year as a min to get that. Check her P60's to see.

BSM2014

Horseunderwater wrote: »

JSA contributions may br payable for 6 months, but she need to have earned over £5.1k 4 2011/12 & £5.350k for the following year as a min to get that. Check her P60's to see.

Thank you for the advise. She has earned that so hopefully that is a route forward.

FBaby

What options are available to us? We are concerned that its doing to be difficult for her to find new part time employment , especially that is going to bring in more than the cost of subseqent child care. Would she be entitled to job seekers for instance and if so for how long?

However she needs to take into consideration that although she might be able to request that she only applies to part time positions, she won't be able to only apply to jobs paying only over a certain amount. She will be expected to apply to any jobs (up to whatever agreed limit) whatever the salary.