retirement on ill health

cwrtcoed

Hi
Currently my wife works for a local authority and 7 months ago she suffered a TIA or mini stroke so she has lost the mobility of her left side.
She has made improvement but I'm not sure if she will ever recover fully to go back to work within her role.

There has been mention of being pensioned off, bearing in mind she still has over 20 years service left to do.
The stroke is stress related which is strongly linked to her job whereby her manager (against the advice of another manager and office colleagues) had loaded her work up to maximum which I believe has caused this medical problem.
She had already had a long spell off due to the same issue of work overload and time constraints, and six months later she found herself back in the same position.


What I wanted to find out if the local authorities offer full pension and lump sum as if she had done her full time there.
Unison are pretty crap in these organisations, and I wanted to see if anyone else has any experience they could assist me with because this is foreign ground for me.

Comms69

cwrtcoed wrote: »

Hi
Currently my wife works for a local authority and 7 months ago she suffered a TIA or mini stroke so she has lost the mobility of her left side.
She has made improvement but I'm not sure if she will ever recover fully to go back to work within her role.

There has been mention of being pensioned off, bearing in mind she still has over 20 years service left to do.
The stroke is stress related which is strongly linked to her job whereby her manager (against the advice of another manager and office colleagues) had loaded her work up to maximum which I believe has caused this medical problem.
She had already had a long spell off due to the same issue of work overload and time constraints, and six months later she found herself back in the same position.


What I wanted to find out if the local authorities offer full pension and lump sum as if she had done her full time there. - No. She cant do the job, she can be dismissed on capacity grounds
Unison are pretty crap in these organisations, and I wanted to see if anyone else has any experience they could assist me with because this is foreign ground for me.

Unison, one of the biggest unions in the country are 'pretty crap'?


I suspect actually they aren't telling you what you want to hear and you've taken that as being 'pretty crap'

bouicca21

I suspect actually they aren't telling you what you want to hear and you've taken that as being 'pretty crap'

That may be correct, since on the face of it OP's wife is capable of work, just not what she was doing previously, but another possibility is that the local rep is not particularly good. I'd recommend getting advice from head office.

nicechap

TIA = Transient Ischaemic Attack. i.e it goes away.

Major causes are not stress :-

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/transient-ischaemic-attack-tia/causes/

Maybe you mean a CVA, known more commonly as a stroke. I've worked with a number of people who have hemiparalysis, one was a HR manager for a national company.

In terms of LA medical retirement, I think its only for people with terminal conditions, anything else would be according to how much she has paid in and how early she is getting it. And that would be after referral to occupational health etc as well as prognosis from consultant etc.

Your union would be best placed to advise you.

Silvertabby

There are 4 levels of ill health retirement in the LGPS, starting with 'dismissal on grounds of ill health' which doesn't have any added pension benefits.

Tier 1.
Member not expected to work again before SPA. Pensionable service is enhanced to State pension age.

Tier 2.
Member could work again before SPA. Pension accrued to date of leaving is enhanced by 25%.

Tier 3.
Very rarely offered. Unenhanced pension is only paid for a set period, as member could be expected to return to work within a couple of years.

Obviously, it's much more complicated than this.

First thing to do would be to ask HR to refer your wife to Occ Health for a medical assessment.

cwrtcoed

Hi silver tabby
Yes that sounds about right with those options, she also has fibromyalgia and functional neurological disorder which was diagnosed by a consultant so not a good place to be at this time.
I'm hoping they will pension her off cause I can't see her working again

Lioness_Twinkletoes

cwrtcoed wrote: »

Hi silver tabby
Yes that sounds about right with those options, she also has fibromyalgia and functional neurological disorder which was diagnosed by a consultant so not a good place to be at this time.
I'm hoping they will pension her off cause I can't see her working again

If she has 20 years service left that must make her around 47? If so, are you seriously suggesting that she'll never work again? There is nothing that can be done to help her recover and carry out some form of work?

cwrtcoed

According to her consultant and GP No, bit gutting really and hard to take in