If granny is mugged, the childminder has a nervous breakdown, or your little darling is involved in a playground fight or suspended from school, you are entitled to take time off to deal with the crisis. But if the boiler bursts, that’s bad luck; you’ve no right to wait for the plumber unless time off for this kind of emergency is stipulated in your contract.

The rules for dependants say you are allowed to take time off work to deal with sudden emergencies involving family. Leave will last only one or two days. Pay is at the employer’s discretion.

Joe Boone, assistant secretary for industrial relations at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, advises teachers to check locally agreed conditions of service, as they may be entitled to paid leave for emergencies. Other contingencies covered by the regulations include the illness or injury of a dependant.

If someone in the family is assaulted, but not injured, you are allowed leave to help or comfort them. If a relative dies, you can take time off to make funeral arrangements, as well as to attend the funeral.

The rules also say that employees can take time off to help a dependant who is having a baby; a man would be allowed leave to be with his partner during labour, for instance. You can take emergency leave to deal with a crisis affecting your children.

The regulations are particularly useful for teachers dealing with an officious head who is reluctant to grant leave, says Mr Boone. Some schools are more flexible than others; examples of paid leave for family reasons include a week off for a son’s wedding in Greece, and a day off for a child’s graduation.

“We give negotiated leave in term time for special events. This could be a combination of paid and unpaid leave, and giving time back in lieu by agreement,” says the head of a large comprehensive in Nottingham.

Unfortunately, you have no right to long-term leave to care for dependants. Val Shield, a national officer at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, says teachers who are caring for a terminally ill relative are often forced to take sick leave themselves, on the grounds of stress and exhaustion.

But if your child goes into hospital , you could be entitled to unpaid “parental leave”. These rules give parents or grandparents of children under five the right to up to 13 weeks off. You don’t have to take the leave all at once; you can ask for as much or as little time as you like. You might use the leave to check out new schools, or to settle a child with a new childminder, for instance.

In practice, teachers hardly ever take parental leave, say the unions. The demands of the job and the loss of pay make it impracticable.

For further information go to: www.dti.gov.ukertime_off_deps.htm