Home Health & Hospice Week

If In-Person School Is An Option, You Don’t Have To Grant FFCRA Paid Leave

But there is an important exception to this rule, new FAQ explains.

With the feds and the courts at odds over whether home health and hospice staff qualify as exempt from Families First Coronavirus Response Act paid leave, you’d better pay attention to new clarifications on the law pertaining to back-to-school.

For example: If your employees’ children attend “hybrid” school, the school will be considered closed on the days their children are required to do remote or distance learning. “For purposes of the FFCRA and its implementing regulations, the school is effectively ‘closed’ to your child on days that he or she cannot attend in person,” the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division says in new questions-and-answers added Aug. 27. “You may take paid leave under the FFCRA on each of your child’s remote-learning days,” the DOL WHD tells workers.

Another example: If your workers’ children have a choice to do in-person or remote schooling and they choose remote, that does not qualify as a school closure for FFRCA. “You are not eligible to take paid leave under the FFCRA because your child’s school is not ‘closed’ due to COVID–19 related reasons; it is open for your child to attend,” the Q&A explains. “FFCRA leave is not available to take care of a child whose school is open for in-person attendance. If your child is home not because his or her school is closed, but because you have chosen for the child to remain home, you are not entitled to FFCRA paid leave.”

There is an exception, however, if “your child is under a quarantine order or has been advised by a health care provider to self-isolate or self-quarantine” due to COVID-19, the DOL WHD says. “You may be eligible to take paid leave to care for him or her.”

Note: The Q&As are at www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/pandemic/ffcra-questions.