Paid Leave exists – to enable people to take time away from work to heal, or to care for a family member – without worrying about their paycheck.

CT Paid Leave is a state program that provides workers with income replacement when they take time off for qualifying health or family reasons. There are six reasons that a person may qualify for CT Paid Leave benefits.

• Your own serious health condition: The key to whether something is a serious health condition is that the person must be both incapacitated and receiving treatment from a healthcare provider. Both physical and mental health conditions may qualify. Organ or bone marrow donation is a serious health condition, as is pregnancy.
• Caring for a family member with a serious health condition: If a family member is experiencing a serious health condition, a worker can take leave to care for them. In Connecticut, a family member means a child, spouse, sibling, parent, grandparent, grandchild, or individual related by blood or affinity whose close association the employee shows to be the equivalent of those family relationships. Relationship by affinity means that if the worker has a close, personal relationship with someone to whom they are not biologically or legally related, they can still take leave to care for them. An example is an unmarried couple who have a familial, spouse-like relationship despite their lack of legal relationship to each other.
• Bonding with a new child: Bonding leave refers to the time a parent takes to bond with a new child that has entered their home through birth, adoption, or foster care. Bonding leave is available to both parents, and it can be taken at any time in the 12 months following the child’s birth, adoption, or placement in the home. For example, a birthing parent might take the first 12 weeks after the birth as bonding leave and the non-birthing parent might take the subsequent 12 weeks. In the case of adoption or foster care, this leave can also be used for pre-adoption or pre-placement activities, like court dates or necessary travel.
• Caring for an injured military family member: The spouse, parent, child, or next of kin of a covered service member who incurs a serious injury or illness in the line of active duty in the Armed Forces may be able to take military caregiver leave to provide care for the service member.
• Qualifying exigency leave: This leave applies to military families. Qualifying exigencies are specific reasons for leave arising from the deployment of the worker’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent on covered active duty with the Armed Forces. These circumstances include short notice deployment, military events, non-routine childcare or parental care, financial and legal arrangements, counseling, rest and recuperation, post-deployment activities, and other approved reasons.
• Family violence leave: A worker who is experiencing family violence may take leave for certain reasons related to the family violence. These reasons include seeking medical or psychological care or counseling, relocating due to family violence, seeking services from a victim services organization, or participating in civil or criminal proceedings resulting from the family violence.

For more information on CT Paid Leave or to start an application, visit ctpaidleave.org.

This article was written by Jessica Vargas, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at CT Paid Leave.