A sick leave may also be granted for the need to care for a sick family member. Clients of our PRWT accounting office often ask what conditions must be met in order to be able to use this form of support.

Each employee may be forced to take personal care of a sick family member, for example, a sick parent or a child who is not provided with care by other people. The solutions contained in the Polish Act of 25 June 1999 on cash benefits from social insurance in the event of sickness and maternity (uniform text in Journal of Laws of 2021, item 1133 as amended), hereafter as the “Act” are helpfull in this case.

The established Act regulates, inter alia, the right to care allowance in the event of personal care for a sick family member (this may be a child, spouse, parent, parent of a child, stepfather, stepmother, parents-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren, siblings and children over 14 years of age – if they are in the household with the insured person during the period of care).

The Act indicates the conditions that must be met in order to apply for the  benefit. In general, it can be used if there is no other person who can provide care for a sick child or other family member. However, this restriction does not apply to parents of a child up to 2 years of age, they may take advantage of the allowance even if there is another person who could take care of the child. While receiving the allowance, you cannot take up gainful employment (such action may be questioned by ZUS and result in the obligation to return the allowance, as well as the situation where it would turn out that there is another family member at home who can take care of the sick person). The period during which you can benefit from the allowance depends, inter alia, on from the age of the child and ranges from 14 to 60 days in a calendar year. The amount of the allowance is 80% of the allowance base, i.e. the average salary for the last 12 months.

In order to benefit from the allowance (in the case of employers employing more than 20 people), the employee must submit the relevant documents to the employer (exemption issued by a doctor and an application for care allowance on the appropriate ZUS form (Z-15A or Z-15B). If the employer employs less than 20 people, then the employee is obliged to submit the relevant documents to ZUS on his own.