Children sometimes fall ill and you may need to stay home from work to take care of your child. Below we have gathered information on VAB that may be useful to know.

Childcare leave is when you stay home from work and lose income to look after a sick child. It is also referred to as babysitting or nannying. The allowance you receive when you take care of your child is called temporary parental allowance.

You can get compensation for maternity leave:

- From the age of 8 months until the child is 12 years old. There are exceptions where you are entitled to benefits even if the child is younger or older (read more about this further down in the article)
- If you stay at home to care for a sick child and lose income
- If you accompany your child to a doctor, child health center, dentist or child and adolescent psychiatry
- If you are at home with the child because the regular carer is ill
- If you are attending a course organized by a health care provider to learn how to care for your child
- If you are insured in Sweden, which you usually are if you live or work here
- If the child lives in Sweden or in the EU/EEA or Switzerland

You can be reimbursed for up to 120 days per year. If there is more than one of you, you can share the days, but both parents cannot be paid for the same child and time. You can take 75%, 50%, 25% and 12.5% of a day, it is up to you and your individual situation to decide how you want to organize your sabbatical days. The compensation you receive is just under 80% of your income, but there is a maximum limit to the amount of money you receive. If your child is sick for more than twenty-two days, you will need to submit a certificate written by a doctor or nurse.

When the child is healthy, you can apply to Försäkringskassan for the days you stayed at home and took leave. Remember to apply no later than 90 days after the first day you were at home with the child!

There are exceptions where you are entitled to reimbursement for maternity leave when the child is under 8 months and over 12 years old. We have listed the different exceptions below.

You can get an allowance for maternity leave if the child is under 8 months old:

- If the child is hospitalized.
- If the child has a permanent place in childcare and you need to stay at home to care for the child.

You can get an allowance for maternity leave if your child is 12 years old but not yet 16:

- If your child needs more help than usual at that age, for example if you need to accompany him/her to a doctor's appointment or if he/she cannot manage on his/her own. If you need to accompany your child to a doctor's appointment, the doctor must sign your medical receipt or certificate stating that you needed to accompany your child
- If you have a medical certificate from the first day you are at home
- If your child has a disability that gets worse, or suffers from another illness that requires you to stay at home with your child
- If the child needs extra supervision or care as a result of a disability or other illness. This is called an advance decision, which is decided by Försäkringskassan. You will need a certificate after the eighth day of illness

You can get compensation for maternity leave if you have had a seriously ill child under 18:

- If there is a danger to the child's life
- If, after or immediately following a life-threatening condition, the child receives treatment for an illness that would put the child's life at risk without that treatment

If you have a child who is or has been seriously ill and cannot be infected by Covid-19, you can get  preventive compensation for maternity leave. You can get it if you need to stay home from work to protect the child from getting infected. Both parents are entitled to compensation if you need to stay at home to care for the child and are unable to work from home. In order to receive the preventive allowance, you must refrain from working and the child must have been seriously ill in 2020. A doctor must also write a statement saying that the child needs to be protected in order not to fall ill with Covid-19.