It IS confusing. The original critical care illness leave provision (ESC Sec. 59.8) provided up to 37 weeks’ unpaid leave to care for a critically ill child; the amendment, which took effect June 4, adds up to 17 weeks to care for a critically ill adult. And, yes, employees already have right to take up to 28 weeks of compassionate care leave to care or support a family member–adult or child–expected to die within 26 weeks (Sec. 59.2). In other words, the leaves overlap.
So why bother creating the new leave, you’re wondering. It has to do, I believe, with the timing not the trigger. With compassionate care and critical illness, leave must end within 52 weeks. But new Sec. 59.8(9) says that if the kid or adult remains critically ill after the 52-week period, the employee gets ANOTHER leave (probably compassionate care) and the Section 59.8 critical illness leave provisions apply to that other leave. So basically, the compassionate care leave becomes an extension to the critical illness leave.
There are also differences in HOW each leave is taken. Critical illness leave can be taken in one or more periods of at least 1 week (Sec. 59.8(8)); compassionate care leave can be taken in no more than 2 installments of at least 1 week (Sec. 59.2(6)).
The other thing to keep in mind is that, theoretically, an employee could take BOTH leaves within the same year–compassionate care followed by critical illness.
At the end of the day, the critical illness leave is not so much a new leave as an injection of flexibility and extension of leave time to care for sick family members. Hope that helps and sorry for the delay in responding. Glenn