Full Transcript
Dr James:
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Dentist who Invest podcast. I have been looking forward to this episode today because it’s one I’ve been meaning to do for an absolute while, and I can’t believe it took until episode 107, 108, whatever this episode will be whenever we release it. This episode is on maternity pay how the system looks, how it works and how you can get the most from it, and I have sat opposite me the lovely Sarah Baskin, who is here to explain everything and everything maternity pay on the NHS, the ins, the outs and everything that we should know. We should have easily made available to us, but we don’t. Sarah, how are you today?
Sarah:
Yeah, I’m good. Thank you, yeah, all good.
Dr James:
Wonderful Whereabouts in the world. Are you talking to us from Sarah?
Sarah:
So I’m talking from just outside Bath, so Southwest.
Dr James:
Bath, okay, oh, look very beautiful In my associate practice yeah. Very beautiful and top marks to Sarah, because she’s literally just finished extracting her tooth before she jumped on the airwaves with myself, so I think that she deserves extra products for that, because I’m sure it’s been a long day in work as well, and you’re still here to give us more, so thank you so much for that, sarah. So, sarah, am I right in saying that you’re an associate or a practice owner?
Sarah:
I’m an associate. I’ve been in this practice for about 12 years now.
Dr James:
And for those that don’t know you, maybe it might be nice if we had a little bit of background.
Sarah:
So I qualified 2007 and did my FD year and I moved over this direction. And then I since then been on two maternity leaves and I just realised when I was on maternity leave I actually didn’t really know how much money I was going to get, how long I was going to get it for, how I could find out how much money I was going to get, and even where to search or who to ask. And it was one of those things where it’s quite hard to ask you what’s the maternity pay going to be like, because immediately they’re like oh, you’re going on maternity leave and you don’t necessarily, if you’re planning mortgage rights or that sort of thing, you actually don’t want to say, oh, we might have a baby one day. What’s the situation be? So when I went on my first maternity leave, when I came back from my second maternity leave, I was noticing quite a few people putting up questions on the different Facebook groups about maternity pay and I was thinking, surely there must be someone that knows the answer to all this. But nobody seemed to be knowing it. So I set up a Facebook group called Dental Bumps, basically to try and put the information in one area so that if somebody asked a question on Facebook, I could be like, hey, just look at this group, I’ve put the information there and then kind of I just thought maybe like 20 people might be interested and then I think over time we’ve got about probably around like 1700 people that have kind of been on there and kind of asking questions quite regularly, and quite a lot of the people there are they still are on there kind of guiding other people. So I just realised there was a bit of a gap in knowledge and where to find it. So it’s just a place where I can pinpoint. So as a result of trying to find out a bit for myself, I worked out where to find it. Well, and then that’s why I’ve got the group to kind of share the information with other people and hopefully so that they can answer questions before they have to be completely lost.
Dr James:
That’s awesome and you know this is the part of the reason this podcast as well, so that this information can be disseminated. I don’t know if is there anything like that on your group. Is there any sort of videos or audio files which describe these sorts of things? The reason that I ask is that you can have all the black and white teas and teas you want. They’re not super accessible. What makes them way more tangible and useful is when you have an audio form. It’s way more accessible and easy to listen to. I’m just wondering is this sort of stuff out there already?
Sarah:
Not that I know of. So basically, at the minute there’s like NHS ask us kind of pin. Basically you can go around in circles asking questions on their NHS because it pinpoints you to then a form that doesn’t open it. So there’s not that useful resources and there’s certainly not any like audio. Just listened to it and it will sort the problem out. You can end up going around the houses with a little bit of finding information. But I’ve posted up things like the links that people need to follow for like the forms and all that stuff like that.
Dr James:
But yeah, there’s nothing that I know of in the kind of audible format. Well, if my NHS pension podcast is anything to go by yeah, 100%. If that previous podcast is anything to go by the NHS pension one there’s so many flipping downloads on that podcast. People tend to mess with me quite a lot and say, wow, why did it take until flipping 2021 for that information to be accessible in that form? And I feel, reading between the lines or guessing, getting a bit ahead of myself, that this podcast will be something similar. So let’s go ahead and delve straight in, but turn it in. Eve, can you just give us, from a very high level, what sort of support is available for? Those moms will be moms who will be on the NHS when they arrive close to their maternity pay.
Sarah:
So, on the NHS this is in England and Wales, I think is very similar. You get maternity leave, which is from the NHS, which is based on your net pensionable earnings, and you also get maternity allowance, which is the Department of Work and Pensions, which is based on being self-employed, which is about £250 a month. Now the NHS one you get for 26 weeks and the maternity allowance, which is the lesser amount, about £600 a month, is the one that you get for 39 weeks, about three months longer, and that one is what you get if you’re NHS and you also get it if you’re private as well. So if you’re private, I think you would just get the maternity allowance from the Department of Work and Pensions. So you get your kind of just over £600 a month, but that is tax free it’s not a lot but it’s tax free and the maternity pay. You pay tax on the NHS maternity so that’s equivalent to your earnings. So you pay superannuation and tax on that earnings.
Dr James:
Okay, so pretty straightforward on the face of it, is that in any way means tested?
Sarah:
So no, maternity allowance is just based on the fact you’ve paid your NHS national insurance class 2 contributions, which as a self-employed person you will have. And then the NHS bit is based on you being active as a performer on the NHS. But there’s a few little kind of stipulations for that in order to be eligible.
Dr James:
Right, okay, so let’s just jump straight in on those with the eligibility criteria. Is that something that you can tell us more about?
Sarah:
Yeah, so to be eligible you have to have been on the performer list for two years. And then it says that the last 26 weeks of this has to be continued. So you can have been in and out of work, but the last 26 weeks must be continuous. But it’s really strange. You worded on the NHS requirements and I’m going to read it out because I don’t think it really makes proper sense. So it says 26 weeks continuous employment before the week they are due to give birth, which makes sense so far, and then it says this period must proceed the 15th week before they are due to give birth, which is two separate things. I don’t think it makes any sense. But I think what they kind of mean is you give birth generally at 40 weeks. So if you take the time off, that it kind of means you just can’t start that job pregnant. You can’t just go to start to work and then if you’re pregnant at that point, having had a break, that wouldn’t quite add up. So if you’re already in your job, that would sort of add up. You’ve got your 26 weeks plus 15 weeks. It’s very weirdly worded and I don’t know why it’s so strange. Essentially, I might be one of the only ones where I’m actually struggling to follow that it literally makes no sense, like even when I write it down, I’m like, basically you’ve got to not you’ve got to already be in a job for the NHS, but for the last, for your pregnancy, basically, and they’re really picky about being continuous employment. Because I’ve got quite a few people who have messaged me and they’ve, in their last kind of few months of work they’ve moved from one job on the Friday to starting a new job on the Monday and because that doesn’t count as continuous because you have the weekend in between, they’ve lost their maternity pay because their dates aren’t continuous. So it’s really important to even change jobs, like Tuesday, and start the next one on Wednesday, or have a nice kind boss who can maybe make sure the dates work out for you. But you do not want to have a gap in that last during your pregnancy. If you have a gap in your working for the NHS on paper, on your, you know, on the different contracts, you can lose your maternity pay.
Dr James:
Okay so whilst we’ve done fully understand that that’s one of the take home messages, which is to not change jobs.
Sarah:
You can move jobs on transition so you could say one job, move to the next one and then, as long as your numbers and your dates cross over, or like Tuesday, wednesday, but having a weekend gap is not okay in that last and because the way they’ve worded it is so wishy-washy. I think it’s just safe to say be super careful if you’re moving jobs in the last during your pregnancy.
Dr James:
I’m going to read it out here, because it’s in front of me. Thanks for that. Yeah, I’m going to read it right here because it’s right in front of me, to see if, well, I’ll read it all out and then we’ll. We’ll reserve our judgment, I suppose, until after I’ve said it, because then what it means is we can give all of the information that we possibly can’t anybody who’s listening. So, 26 weeks continuous employment before the week they are due to give birth. Okay, I get that. This period must proceed the 15th week before they are due to give birth. There’s where I get lost.
Sarah:
Yeah, I don’t know what that means.
Dr James:
Anyway, there’s more to it. Oh, no wait, sorry, that’s it actually my fault. So, yeah, if anybody can you know what, if anybody can interpret what that means for us, or if anybody can just break that down into understandable terms, I would be super interested to hear. However, what Sarah has just kindly done is given us some take-home actionable advice there, which will mean that we don’t contravene any rules that we may or may not understand.
Sarah:
Yeah, I don’t know if the NHS understands it, but they key the information into a computer and they’ve had people say look like the NHS staff. They’re like I’m really sorry it won’t let me process the claim. It just doesn’t, it’s not continuous, so it’s really important.
Dr James:
Okay, no problem. So that’s how you avoid, so that’s how we avoid contravening that piece of text right there. It’s just basically, if you can house some crossover or avoid changing jobs at all while you’re pregnant. Yeah, Because even if we don’t fully understand it, if we understand what it means, then that’s possibly the most important thing.
Sarah:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr James:
So anything else we must know on eligibility.
Sarah:
I mean very obviously, but you have to have actually stopped work to have the baby and like that has to be. You know you have to stop work. And if it does have a wording that’s saying reached the 11th week before the week there due to give birth, which I think technically ridiculously, if your baby was premature you wouldn’t be eligible. But I don’t think they’ve ever enforced that because, again, I think they just word things really poorly. For that One that is important, probably for your listeners, is that you mustn’t, you can’t, be a limited company, because a limited company can’t get pregnant because it’s a company, so you can’t be a limited company. But again, you could probably look at that and work out a way of being on the performer list for that number of years and then not being a limited company for the right amount of time to be eligible. Something to think about and some people might be a person for their NHS activity, and then they might be for private work, a limited company and all that sort of I’m sure there’s some way that you could want to look, but anyway, that’s basically what and you can’t be an FD because if you’re an FD by definition, you haven’t worked for two years. So your FD year is allowed to count as your two years employment or not employment, because we’re self-employed but that can count as one year, so you have to be at least a second year in, so technically you wouldn’t be an FD because you’re already working on that stage.
Dr James:
Got you Wonderful. Thank you for that. Anything else we should know on Eligible Liberty?
Sarah:
I think that’s the only things I know about Eligible Liberty, just being super careful about the dates.
Dr James:
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Okay, cool, brilliant. So let’s go back, let’s revert to what we were saying earlier, because what you did very concisely and very usefully from a very high level, is outline the NHS maternity pay versus standard statutory, I suppose, maternity pay. Can you break down a little bit more of the ins and outs about the NHS maternity pay? Sure how much we get, when do we get it? Everything we need to know?
Sarah:
So the NHS maternity pay is based on your net pensionable earnings. An important thing is it’s not based on historic earnings. It’s based on the figure that is put on campus for your current year. So, like if I was going on maternity leave next week, the figure that would be on campus for my projection for the year the 22-23 would be the one that would be used. So it’s really important to make sure the projection is right. Normally, the projection is put on by your boss so that you get the right percentage taken off your pension, so that if you’re expected to be a certain amount, you get like 12% off your pension or your 9% or whatever it is for the pension. The problem with this often is that your boss knows already that you’re going off on maternity leave in December. So things right. Well, your target’s this much, so you’re going to earn April, may, june, july, august, september, october and then things right. Well, if you’re only in work for 812th of the year, I’m going to put 812th of the contract onto your estimated earnings. But actually what they need to do is put what you would get for the whole year as your estimate, because that’s what your maternity pay is based on, and that is again a massive problem because it can be corrected quite easily, but because often people don’t know what they should be getting. In the first place, they don’t know the figure. The boss puts down the figure that they’ve already put on Compass and it’s not necessarily the right figure because the boss has already done their allocations of all the payments and who’s going to get what percentage of the overall kind of pensionable accumulation of the whole contract. So that’s a really tricky one because often people will have the wrong value and then instead of getting the full maternity pay they’ll get like 812th of it and they won’t even necessarily know because they don’t know that the figure is wrong and you need to double check it. So that’s super important to make sure it’s your annual earnings as though you’re not on maternity leave, which is basically for the NPE is your NHS pay, whatever your target is, times your UDA rate and then taking off your lab bill. So it’s the normal and there’s different ways of calculating it, but that should give you an idea of what it should be that figure the NHS get. So that’s how they sort out your pension, but it’s how they sort out your maternity. So it’s super important. But the figure that you have on Compass if you want to know how much you’ll get. You’re basically, if you’ve got the yearly figure, you get maternity pay for 26 weeks. So you get it for half a year. So if your figure up there whatever that says, you get half of that amount and you get it paid over 26 weeks. So you can see quite easily what your amount’s going to be. The figure on Compass gets divided by 52 to give you a weekly amount and then it’s paid in chunks. So you’ll get roughly four weeks at a time and it’ll be paid in the same way that your boss would pay you your normal UDA. So it’ll be the same time that you’d get that. But you can see the reports on Compass to see how much you’re getting. But you can ask NHS what your weekly figure is going to be and that will tell you what your overall figure is going to be. That’s the 26 weeks of the maternity pay.
Dr James:
Right, and just purely out of curiosity, does that come from your dental practice and which you’re employing?
Sarah:
So there’s no reason for bosses to be reluctant about getting the figure right. It doesn’t come from them, it comes from the NHS. The boss still gets the normal amount of money to pay the rest of your loco and whatever’s there. It gets exactly the same contract, everything normal. Which is why it’s a bit ridiculous that people are really having to fight to get the right value, because all the boss has to do is put the correct figure on, get the maternity processed and then make sure the figures are correct for the remaining members of staff. So reallocate the UDAs to whoever’s doing the UDAs. But yeah, it comes from the NHS, so the boss will get the normal NHS contract value and then they’ll get the maternity payment as well, which they’re meant to pass straight on to the person and they’re not meant to hold it back as you might not come back or they’re not meant to do anything from around with it. They’re meant to pass it on to the associate or former who’s ever on maternity leave.
Dr James:
Do you feel and this might be a hard question to answer do you feel that maybe that could be the case that potentially, people are not always as forthcoming as it should be with that because they think it comes out of their own pocket? Or is it hard?
Sarah:
to say I don’t know. I think lots of bosses find the whole MPE thing completely confusing anyway. So I almost think once they’ve bothered getting their head around what everyone’s going to be getting over the next however long, what percentage everyone’s going to be in, I almost think they’re just like. There’s not any easy guidance. I tried to get a printout to be like how do you demonstrate that they should put it out for the whole year, not just the time you’re working? But they’re not very forthcoming with it. They’ll send like one email with some information on that. I was like can I have something printed that could actually be published? I can’t get any information like that from the powers that be. So yeah, but it doesn’t come out of the bosses. I just think bosses are kind of confused by it because all of pension stuff is quite hard to figure out. But it also with the MPE thing. It’s really important that everybody makes sure that their pensionable learnings are correct, because it’s not only if you’re going maternity leave, like if anybody went on long term sick leave they would get. It would be based on the MPE figure what they would get on sick leave. So they would get sick leave for 26 weeks on the NHS, but you wouldn’t get it for the first four weeks. So and same for paternity leave. So actually loads of people need to make sure their figures are correct because mostly people just don’t really think about it because you know there’s nothing to think about in life. But that actually really important because if you are on sick pay you’ve got the wrong figure down on your compass, you’ll end up getting paid hardly anything for your sick pay. And that’s the same for men and women.
Dr James:
Why do you think there would be a mismatch between the figures that they have let’s say, only exact and their practice and compass Are?
Sarah:
they not the same? It’s not about what you’re actually earning. It’s about what your target is for the year. So your boss has to come up with who’s going to get what you know he’ll be like that person’s target is that. That person’s target is that person’s target is that that person’s target is that the reason there’s often a mismatch is that they already know. Like in my case, my figure was wrong because I was going away in August. So when my boss put the information in July, he was like, well, you’re only going to earn for like four months of the year. So he put a really small figure up, or like three quarters smaller than it should have been. Because he was like, well, you’re off on a taty and I was like, yeah, but it needs to pretend I’m there the whole year to get the right figure, because your annual figure, your annual income, is what you’re all. That’s what the projections based on.
Dr James:
Right with you, right, okay, so it comes from maybe not fully understand, you know somewhere somewhere along the line, somewhere somewhere along the line slightly misunderstands what this is.
Sarah:
Yeah, and it’s not easy to when. It’s not easy to argue it because it’s really hard to find the information to say, oh, like I’ve literally got a screenshot of an email that somebody sent me, an NHS. I send on to other people to be like, show this to your boss. This is the NHS lady saying this is what you do. But you can’t go to like there’s a really big document, the statement of financial entitlements, which has got loads of the blurb about maternity and paternity and long term sick, and it’s just not really clear. It doesn’t say on there, it just says based on your monthly earnings, but it doesn’t say where they get the figure for the monthly earnings.
Dr James:
Which is the?
Sarah:
NPE, but they don’t say that.
Dr James:
So Well, I’m really glad we made this podcast. That’s actually another whole other dimension as to why this is valuable.
Sarah:
I think it predates Compass. So because it predates Compass, it’s not been updated. Nobody knows.
Dr James:
Good stuff that is absolutely flipping gold dust and you know what. Actually, this podcast is just as important for principles as it is associated Better signs of it.
Sarah:
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Dr James:
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. You touched upon this already. I wanted to know the ins and outs of taxation. I think I believe you said that it’s not no, no, no, it is taxed right Income tax.
Sarah:
Yeah, so you’re.
Dr James:
Yeah, and this is the NHS pension, just to be clear.
Sarah:
NHS money. Nhs maternity is taxed. It’s like it’s an income. You pay pay tax on it and the maternity allowance is now there’s a quirk about the maternity. So you get your NHS pay, which is taxed. That’s for 26 weeks. You get your maternity allowance, but actually you don’t really get your maternity allowance for the first 26 weeks because it’s subtracted from your NHS pay. So you’d, as an NHS in person, I would get my NHS pay less each month 600 pounds maternity allowance so I’d have it deducted. So my maternity allowance I get, but I also get it taken off my maternity pay. So it doesn’t sound like I really get any benefit from having maternity allowance, having it taken off my NHS pay. But it does mean that you get your maternity allowance, which is tax free. So you the only benefit you get is that 600 pounds of the money that you get is tax free. So you get less NHS pay but therefore you get less tax. And then you get the tax and then the maternity allowance carries on a bit longer. So maternity NHS is taxed and then the maternity allowance is a separate thing and that’s tax-free and you have to apply for both of them, because if you don’t apply for both of them, the NHS, just assume that you have, and then they take off 600 pounds a month anyway. So, you just have to, but you would be eligible for it, so you would apply for it, because that would be the issue. So yeah, there is a little issue with the maternity allowance, which is the 156 pounds a week sum. The issue with that is that when you apply for it, it’s based on you being up to date with your class II national insurance contributions, which we always pay in the January and July tax return. So, by definition, most of the time you’re not up to date with them. So a lot of the time you will get you’ll apply for your maternity allowance and then you’ll get a letter back saying you haven’t paid all your contributions. So you’re only gonna get 27 pounds a week for your maternity allowance, which I don’t even understand how anyone in the world could live, or even pretend to live, on 27 pounds a week. I mean, I don’t know how they come up with that figure, but they basically so then they’ll say you need to top up your class II contributions and then it will be sorted out. So now that is generally sorted out automatically, but you’ll first get a letter to say you’re only gonna get 27 pounds a week and then you’ll get a little bill from the HMRC to top up your class II contributions. So it’s just paying a bit of your tax return early and it’s like 40, 50 quid it’s not very much, it’s not, it’s only your class II contributions and then that’ll get topped up to your 156 pounds a week. But every time everyone gets this letter, they’re always surprised because it’s a stupid quirk, because self-employed people are never up to date with their class II contributions because they don’t do their tax return until afterwards. But it does get sorted out. Sometimes you have to be on the phone to the Department of Work and Pensions. I was on the phone to them for like two hours but it was sorted out and I have a feeling that it sorted out a lot more quickly these days. But I did do a survey on my Facebook page about it and 85% of the people said they had that problem. So it’s really common.
Dr James:
Right got you.
Sarah:
Ridiculous but common.
Dr James:
Definitely a quick system, 100%. However, that little gem that you just gave right there is the remedy to fix it, which is awesome.
Sarah:
Yeah, so it’s all sorted, but it’s just a headache, and that’s why it’s quite good to apply for the maternity allowance as soon as you can, because then you can deal with it before you’ve got a screaming child.
Dr James:
Okay, awesome, top of the advice, right, cool.
Sarah:
So anything else that you think might be relevant or, in terms of what we’ve just discussed, anything else that you’d like to bring up regarding so, just in terms of maternity pay, a lot of people don’t realise that once you’ve had your maternity leave, you don’t like, you’ve earned your maternity leave by working for the NHS over the last couple of years, there’s no question that you have to pay it back. For some people like, oh, don’t you have to go back, and people say, oh, you have to go back and do one UDA, or you don’t have to go back to work in England and Wales after you have done your maternity, so you can move jobs, you can do anything. But there’s no stipulation to come back to the practice. There’s no requirement, obviously, apart from if you’ve said to them what you’re taking, however long off, you need to give the notice periods. You can’t just disappear and not come back. But there’s no obligation, because some people are really worried about perhaps deciding that they’re not gonna be working, wanting a different job, and then they can’t. They’re thinking, oh, do I have to pay back my maternity leave? There’s no taking back a maternity pay. So once you’re there, once you’ve done your maternity leave, the boss can’t withhold it or anything like that. I always suggest it’s quite sensible, if you are gonna leave your job, to have your six months of pay and then give you notice after that, because there’s been a few cases where bosses have just been like well, I’m not gonna give you your last maternity leave then, and kind of just being a bit like well, you’re leaving, so I’m gonna stop, take your name off the contract and if you’re still not on the contract, you’re not gonna get maternity pay. So I always think, if your boss is not always kind of playing ball nicely with things, I just think actually give you, if you could give you notice after six months of money, say, give you three months notice. Then if you’ve said that you’re gonna come back at like nine months or a year or something, obviously it’s nice to give them as much notice as possible, but if you are feeling that your boss is more likely to try and keep on with your money which they do sometimes then you’ll have to kind of make a judgment call on that.
Dr James:
Okay, yeah, food for thought. Food for thought, 100%. Anything else to run that off. Anything, any pertinent issues you can think of.
Sarah:
Well, I could say what about after having babies? A couple of like things that might not be, people might not be aware of. Like things like, once you’ve had your baby, you can get tax free childcare. So that’s something that not everybody would know about and that’s used to be on like batches and things like that, which obviously, when we were self-employed you wouldn’t get. But as long as neither parent is on more than 100,000 or expects to be, you can get the tax free childcare from the government, which means that you pay money in, and for every 2000 pounds that you pay in I think it’s per quarter you get the government tops up 500 pounds. So that’s really good and you can do that throughout the year Because once you get to nurseries and stuff, you’re paying out like however much every month on that. But the fact that it’s kind of 20% less than it might be is a nice little bonus for that, and then you can pay that. You pay into that. If you’ve got your first baby, as soon as you go back to work, you can start paying into that account. Even if they’re not in childcare, actually, even if they’re being looked after by grandparents, you can build up a steady account so that when they aren’t, are they formed of childcare. Then you can use that money to pay for childcare and you can use it for like when they’re at school, for, like after school clubs. You can literally use it for anything wrap around care at school. So it’s really sensible. But I think at the moment loads of people don’t use it for eligibility for that. So that’s a really good thing as long as you’re both earning under 100,000 pounds and then when they’re born, if neither parent are earning over 60,000 pounds, then you’ll be eligible for child benefit, which you can just I don’t know how much that is, we’d be kind of that build up. But the important thing with that is there’s some suggestion that is sensible to apply for that, even if you’re not gonna take the money, because it’s something to do with the child getting their national insurance on the further down the line. So that’s the sort of thing to kind of look on like money saving expert and see if that’s sensible. But even if your earnings are over 60,000 pounds for the parents, because if they’re less than that you can build up a little pot of money outside. But it’s not a great deal, but I think it’s about maybe a thousand pounds a year per child. So it’s better than not having it.
Dr James:
Good to know.
Sarah:
good to know, it’s not like the children become a good earning potential quite a few years, so it’s potentially a good option there. But yeah, that’s done. Obviously that’s another option as well, but yeah, that’s all the quirks of maternity, oh stop.
Dr James:
You think I can tell you’ve done your research on this 100%, that’s you know what that’s gonna be so valuable, because there’s tons of things that were in there that were literally you know. The whole point of this podcast is that you can listen to an episode and you can make more money and within what we’ve just talked about just then, there’s about 10 different things that any expecting family can go ahead and use and implement, and I think that’s absolutely awesome. What did you get all this knowledge from? Is this just through first time experience, sarah?
Sarah:
Yeah, I think I just was kind of trying to figure it out myself and then I kind of was like, why is this information not clear? And then, once I was trying to tell other people about it, I was like, right, I kind of actually better check what the rules are on this, because you know, I can’t be like, oh yeah, this is what I had, but I might not even be true, because that’s the least useful kind of Facebook help when someone tells you something wrong. So I just kind of looked at the documents on it and then I emailed the NHS people quite a lot, but they don’t really reply to me very much anymore. So I think they fell for the questions. They’re always like it doesn’t look like you’re on the terms of it at the moment. Can you tell me what your due date is? And I’m like I’m not, I’m just asking generally. So they’re not quite so keen on replying because I’m gonna like pin them or ask them specifics rather than the wish you or she reply. But yeah, I just wanted to find out a bit more and kind of help people along, because it’s quite confusing and then quite hard to figure out, even when I explained it how here I think this really does not make any sense, but at least it hopefully makes a bit more sense to someone.
Dr James:
This is it, you know, and this is like when we make a podcast like this, it’s important to remember that neither of us are experts per se, but zero is not knowing anything about it and 100 is knowing absolutely everything there is to know about it. If we can even get someone of 50, then that’s a 50% positive gain and that’s why I look at things, that’s why I look at a podcast like this. So absolutely wanna caveat everything with the fact that, yes, there’s a lot of concrete stuff in there that you can go ahead and use. Even if you just use this as a reference podcast in some places to look and some things to guide the rudder on the ship during your voyage, during your journey, then that’s the purpose and that’s why I love stuff like this, and that’s actually for Ben Denton invest in a nutshell, really. So thank you. Sam, anything else you can think of Any other gems.
Sarah:
No, I mean, I guess, like, if they’re looking for information, then obviously via, like the Facebook, the dental bumps maternity page is. There’s lots of pinned posts on that which have kind of got the forms and the NHS things to help people out. I feel quite bad because it’s not. It’s very England’s, england slash, wales centric, because I can barely get my head around England or Wales, let alone Scotland, but there are separate groups in Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own rules, so it’s yeah, it’s complicated, but yeah, I guess, point them in the direction of the dental bumps Facebook group because there is lots of helpful information on that 100% and just for total clarity, I’ve got the name right here Dental Bumps, Maternity Information and Support. That is the name of the. Facebook group I mean, I just thought only like 20 people were going to join it, so I didn’t really think about giving it a catchy name when I set it up. And then I was like oh, okay, well, I just I know I could change it, but I haven’t done that.
Dr James:
Listen, listen, sarah, you’re talking to someone who can totally empathise, because I started the Facebook group as well, which is the point of this podcast and exactly the same thing happened. So I get it. I actually changed the name recently because it basically, where the group progressed to, diverged away from what I’d originally planned. So just letting you know, there is a name change function on Facebook groups.
Sarah:
Yeah, I know.
Dr James:
Might be worth looking at. You’ve been super generous with your time today. I feel like keeping this podcast powerful, punchy and concise actually will lend itself to being more accessible. So if you are totally happy with everything that we said, if you feel like now is a nice time to round it all off, then we can do just that.
Sarah:
Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, I think that’s everything I can link off. Yeah.
Dr James:
Smashing. Sarah, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. We’ll catch up really, really soon. See you later.
Sarah:
Take care Bye.