Employee Assistance Programme Maternity Support: UK Guide

A pregnant employee must tell her employer her due date and her planned leave start date at least 15 weeks before the baby is expected (GOV.UK, 2026). That gives an employer months of warning to check what its employee assistance programme (EAP) will offer her.

Around 1 in 5 women experience a mental health problem during pregnancy or in the first year after birth, and depression and anxiety are the most common (NHS Long Term Plan, 2019). Recovery from a difficult birth, a pregnancy loss and the return to work all fall inside that period.

Most EAPs are built around an employee who recognises a problem, finds the number and rings it. This post looks at whether that design suits maternity, what the evidence says about EAP reach, and which questions HR can put to a provider.

What does an EAP do, and what is it designed for?

An employee assistance programme is a workplace service that usually offers confidential counselling. Acas says some organisations offer counselling, and that it is usually delivered through an EAP (Acas, 2026). The sector's trade body describes EAPs as brief intervention counselling programmes that support employees in the short term (EAPA UK, 2020).

That description comes from the sector itself. EAPA UK also says EAPs were "never intended to be the whole solution to rising problems with mental health" (EAPA UK, 2020).

The same body reports that employers using its calculator estimated an average return of £10.85 for every £1 spent on an EAP, across October 2021 to October 2022 (EAPA UK, 2023). The figure is an estimate built from employers' own entries on absence and productivity, and the authors note that calculator users select themselves. It says nothing specific about maternity.

Do employees know their EAP exists, and do they use it?

Reach varies by source. A 2024 HCML survey found that 79% of employers provide an EAP while 27% of employees realise one exists. Nearly 85% of employers said utilisation was 3 to 5% (HCML, 2024). EAPA UK's calculator data puts average usage at 12.14% for October 2021 to October 2022 (EAPA UK, 2023).

Both sources have limits. HCML sells EAP-related services, and EAPA UK's data comes from a self-selected group of employers. No published UK figure on EAP use by employees who are pregnant or on maternity leave turned up in the research for this post, so any provider claim about maternity usage is worth asking to see.

Reach matters more during leave. Statutory Maternity Leave is 52 weeks (GOV.UK, 2026). Keeping in touch days are optional, both sides must agree to them, and employees can work up to 10 days during leave (GOV.UK, 2026). A mother on leave sees less of the intranet, the team meetings and the benefits reminders. An EAP that depends on her remembering a leaflet from before she left has a reach problem built into its design.

Why does maternity need a different approach from other EAP use?

Maternity is the one major life event an employer can see coming. An EAP that waits for an employee to speak up cannot use that notice. A proactive design contacts people at planned points before leave, during it and on return, with the employee's agreement.

Starting contact is the hard step. The employee has to notice that something is wrong, work out that the EAP covers it and call, while recovering from birth and caring for a newborn on little sleep. The system goes quiet between appointments, so mothers are left to spot their own warning signs.

A short course of general counselling meets some needs. For perinatal anxiety or depression, birth trauma, pregnancy loss, physical recovery from birth or anxiety about returning to work, it can feel like a plaster on a broken bone. Our piece on who checks on mothers after birth looks at the gap between appointments in more detail.

What do NICE and the NHS say good perinatal care looks like?

NICE guidance covers women planning a pregnancy, pregnant, or within a year of giving birth (NICE, 2025). Its quality standard says women referred for psychological interventions in pregnancy or the postnatal period should start treatment within 6 weeks of referral (NICE, 2016).

NHS England describes specialist perinatal services for women with moderate to severe or complex needs, including expanded community care for women who need support from 12 to 24 months after birth (NHS England, 2026).

An EAP sits beside that care. Its job is to help an employee reach her GP, midwife, health visitor or a specialist service quickly. EAPA UK says that where an EAP is unsuitable, the provider assesses the employee and refers her onward (EAPA UK, 2020). For a mother, that handover is the part of the service that matters most.

What would a maternity-inclusive EAP look like?

A maternity-inclusive EAP reaches employees before they ask, follows the stages of pregnancy, birth, postnatal recovery and return to work, and connects people to specialist care. It acts as a navigation layer into existing services and leaves treatment to the clinicians who provide it.

The first change is timing. The EAP provider and HR agree when contact happens: once a pregnancy is confirmed to the employer, at set points during leave, and in the weeks around return. The employee chooses whether to take part, and managers do not see who does.

The second change is structure. One pathway that follows the mother through pregnancy, birth, the postnatal months and return to work serves her better than a separate helpline for each problem. Return to work is where many careers change, as our post on why mothers leave work after maternity leave sets out.

The third change is measurement. A utilisation rate says how many people called. It cannot show whether the others had a service that fitted their situation. Providers can report relevance as well as volume, for example by asking employees after leave whether the support matched what they needed.

Which questions should HR ask an EAP provider about maternity?

Ask whether the provider contacts employees at set points before, during and after leave, who answers calls about perinatal problems, how it hands people to NHS services, and what it reports. The answers show whether maternity is designed into the service or left to chance.

In practice, the conversation can run like this. Do you contact employees before leave starts, during leave and on return, with their agreement? Can an employee on leave reach you without the company intranet or her line manager? Do your counsellors have perinatal training, and are birth trauma and pregnancy loss covered as standard? How do you hand an employee to her GP, midwife, health visitor or a specialist perinatal service, and how do you check she arrived? What happens when the sessions in our contract run out? Can you report anonymised use by employees who are pregnant, on leave or returning, with small numbers protected? How do you measure whether the support was relevant to the people it reached?

If an employer already pays for an EAP to support life's difficult moments, why should maternity be an exception?

This article is general information, not legal advice.

About Matresa

Matresa is a pre-launch UK digital maternal health platform that offers one personalised pathway from pregnancy to the child's second birthday. It includes an anonymised, aggregated dashboard that gives employers insight into how ready their returning parents are. Matresa was founded by Mari-Carmen Sanchez-Morris, a mother of 3 with a nursing background in paediatric intensive care.

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