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Premature babies' cost concerns

29/11/2007

The financial cost of having a premature baby can be crippling, a new survey has revealed today.

Conducted by the baby care charity Bliss, the poll found the extra cost to parents can range from £1,885 to over £15,000.

On average having a sick or premature baby can cost a total of £189 extra per week during the time their child stays in hospital.

A total of 169 parents of premature babies were questioned by the charity, with the findings revealing that the financial burden can last long after the babies have been discharged from hospital.

Families on low incomes and where one or both of the parents were self employed were particularly hard hit.

Worst case scenarios included partners losing their jobs because of their circumstances and the family home being repossessed or put at risk.

Extra costs include travelling to and from hospital; paying for food away from home; and lost earnings from taking time off work.

Bliss has also expressed concerns with maternity leave, which starts on the day of the baby's birth rather than due-date.

As such many mothers of premature babies feel cheated out of time off work as they will already have used much of it by the time their baby arrives home from hospital.

This leaves them with the only options of taking extra unpaid leave, finding childcare for their baby or giving up work altogether.

Bliss chief executive Andy Cole described the poll's findings as "deeply troubling".

"Having a premature baby is already a traumatic experience without parents having to worry about how they will manage financially," he added.

"Though the Department of Health's recent announcement that their new Health in Pregnancy grant will be available to women from their 25th week of pregnancy is a positive sign that this government understands the importance of financial support for new parents, we would like to see this taken further by reconsidering the way maternity and paternity leave is calculated when a baby arrives early."

The charity is now writing to all primary care trusts and neonatal units to ask them to improve their systems for helping parents of premature and sick babies cope financially.