LEHIGH COUNTY, Pa. – Lehigh becomes one of just a few counties in Pennsylvania offering full paid parental leave for county employees.<\/p>\n
This marks new County Executive Josh Siegel’s first piece of major legislation passed, and it was unanimously.<\/p>\n
“As soon as we found out, we started saving so that, you know, we had enough to cover the bills while I was out,” Lehigh County employee Kelly Evans said in relation to her the birth of her son.<\/p>\n
That was 3 years ago when Lehigh didn’t offer paid family leave.<\/p>\n
“Did it take anything away from the experience? Like being a new mom, bonding with your child, but also having this financial pressure on you?” 69 News reporter Bo Koltnow asked Evans.<\/p>\n
“I think yes, and no, I tried not to let it, but it definitely it’s a stressor in your mind the whole time you’re out,” she responded.<\/p>\n
The signing of new legislation erases that financial stress.<\/p>\n
The county now has 8 weeks paid family leave for county employees starting a family.<\/p>\n
County Executive Josh Siegel says it includes, natural, foster and adopted children of any age.<\/p>\n
“If we’re going to be pro employee, we also have to be pro-family. This is about making sure new parents don’t miss those critical early memories and moments with their newborn or their new family, and it’s also economically sound,” Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Legislation with immediate impact for Luz Cruz. The 23-year-old domestic relations employee is set to have her first child with her boyfriend in November.<\/p>\n
“We both just moved into a new apartment so where we’re financially going through it, but is these helps a lot,” Cruz said.<\/p>\n
Lehigh joins a small handful of counties and the state which offers family benefits to state employees.<\/p>\n
For parents like Evana, whose daughter is due in July, it’s not just time off, it’s time without financial worry.<\/p>\n
“I’m considered high risk. I have several things going on, so I’ve had a lot more appointments than last time, and it’s been difficult to even take time off for those because I was trying to save any time that I had, so it’s a lot a lot easier now,” Evans said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH COUNTY, Pa. – Lehigh becomes one of just a few counties in Pennsylvania offering full paid parental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,40114,81956,81959,16438,393,433,81958,81957,81955],"class_list":["post-183810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-county-employees","tag-family-benefits","tag-financial-stress","tag-josh-siegel","tag-legislation","tag-lehigh-county","tag-new-parents","tag-paid-leave","tag-parental-leave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}