Looking after our members’ best interests, even after they are gone

Wondering if your Prospect membership really benefits you? As writer May Stone explains, the union is always here for members, even when they have gone.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly when I realised something was wrong with my sister, Ellie.

A brilliant, high-flying science teacher, she had just snaffled an amazing new job at a top London private school and was preparing to re-launch her life after the breakdown of her marriage.

She had suffered with depression on and off over the years and so when she became despondent in the late summer of 2017, we all put it down to nerves and the realisation that her marriage of some 15 years was finally over.

Slowly, however, it dawned on us that her fatigue and extraordinary thinness – she had supermodel looks and a figure to match – was not right. Her increasing forgetfulness and the imperceptible change in her facial expression were not right, either.

By the first week of September that year she was signed off with depression from her new job and ringing up family members, weeping about being unable to do Sudoku or remember the route to work. She fell from her bike and so we put our foot down – she must go to the doctor again.

Tests revealed little so she was sent for more tests. Then she had a fall and was admitted to hospital. It still didn’t produce a concrete explanation but every day, her health deteriorated.

Anyone whose loved one has suffered from a brain tumour will recognise the above symptoms. They will also recognise the terrible rapidity with which this disease takes control. Unlike almost every other cancer, it literally strips out its victims. Ellie lost much of the use of her left-hand side. Her hearing deteriorated and, we think, her sight. We could only assume this because she lost the power of speech and couldn’t tell us what she really felt.

Not long after receiving her terminal diagnosis, Ellie bravely tried to put her affairs in order. Her husband did not sign the divorce papers and so she made a will – witnessed by a GP and her solicitor – leaving her entire estate, including her pensions, to her nieces and nephew.

One of her pensions was with the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. As her executor I couldn’t see any reason why they wouldn’t just simply pay out her Death in Service benefit to her nominated beneficiaries. After all, they were a state institution.

How mistaken I was.

The scheme is administered by the outsourcing firm Capita and our family were plunged into a nightmare of bureaucracy and indifference which ended, in December 2018, with their blank refusal to comply with my sister’s wishes because, even though she was physically disabled, she had not given ‘written’ notification under their ‘rules’. Her will wasn’t good enough.

Prospect’s help

In desperation I remembered Ellie had been a member of the Prospect Trade Union and contacted them to ask if they could offer any help or advice.

I didn’t expect much – after all, it was a year and a week since she’d died. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Our situation was considered with compassion by official, Claire Dent, who understood the particular trauma that can accompany a death from a brain tumour. She asked Prospect’s pensions officer, Stewart Mott, to look over our case.

I didn’t feel very hopeful – after all, Teachers’ Pensions had assured us nothing could be done – their hands were tied and the pension Ellie had struggled to leave her loved ones would just have to be paid out to her estranged husband.

However, Mr Mott’s advice was firm and clear: there was no reason at all that Ellie’s will – her written nomination – could not be considered as such by the scheme.

This and Claire Dent’s kind encouragement gave us the glimmer of hope that we needed to carry on. Ellie had worked ceaselessly for her money. Unable to have children, her niece and nephews were the nearest to children she’d ever have. We decided to fight.

I wish I could say that Teachers’ Pensions quickly realised the error of their ways and dealt with us kindly and efficiently, but they didn’t. In the end, after the summary dismissal of our complaint against them, we had to take on the Department for Education.

Our family spent the best part of six months writing a legal appeal which ran to some 500 pages. We were eventually contacted by an Education department official who told us that, essentially, the scheme had got it wrong and Ellie should have been awarded a pension commutation for serious ill-health.

When my sister took out her Prospect membership I know she would have done so partly because it’s a sensible thing for any teacher to do, but also because she believed in the ethos of trade unions.

What she could never have known was how invaluable that membership would be to her loved ones when they needed it most.  Needless to say, we are profoundly grateful for her foresight and for the on-going support and kindness shown to us by Prospect’s staff, without whom Ellie’s nieces and nephew would never have received their inheritance.