Group Protection claims and support

My name is Brian Stacey, I work in engineering, I’m an NDT inspector and, I’ve done that for 35 years.

Before, I was very active. Used to go to the gym, go out most weekends and things like that.

I was at my friends shop and he noticed that my face had dropped and my speech was slurred and other things like that.

Sat at his shop and a ambulance pulls up outside. I say who’s that for?

He says you.

Did all the heart monitors and things like that and said we reckon you’ve had a stroke.

And then we went down to the hospital. They said you’ve had a bleed on the brain, on your left hand side. Which is where the weak side was. My speech was fine, to a degree. But, I was a bit slurred and things like that.

I then had a year off with the stroke and just got on with it really. I just wasn’t gonna give in and just carried on going.

My name is Anna O’Shaughnessy I work for a company called Krysalis consultancy limited.

Krysalis is a leading provider of neurological rehabilitation services in the UK, and offer a variety of different service streams to individuals with complex neurological conditions.

if an individual has a group income protection policy with Aviva, then a referral will come through to Krysalis following perhaps a diagnosis of a neurological condition or a neurological injury that an individual has sustained.

we deliver occupational therapy services and conduct comprehensive assessments with people to be able to understand and learn about the individual themselves, to establish how Krysalis may be able to support that individual through their rehabilitation journey.

The initial stage is getting in contact with Brian and having an initial chat and conversation and to introduce myself, my role, I very quickly learnt how open and honest Brian is, and started to understand him as a person right from that very first conversation.

We then arrange a more formal remote assessment where we conduct a variety of conversations, discussion and assessment to be able to underpin the challenges that Brian was facing at the time.

Additional things I worked with Brian on was relating to was things like fatigue management. The amount of energy that the brain needs to recover and heal and rewire that neuroplasticity is immense.

So its really important to help Brian to understand his symptoms, to understand why he was feeling the way he was feeling and to then look at his everyday life in order to help him. Its important for the organisation to understand element of Brians condition and how best they can support him at work.

Krysalis has been really good with me and the young lady they sent, Anna to help me out with all the different ideas and things like that to progress me on.

Its made me more confident outside of work as well. My driving has got a lot better.

I then went back to work. I cant do the job I was originally doing. I said I need something a bit simpler cause of the stroke and the memory side of it so I went on to a different job.

I feel a lot more confident in myself. That made me feel a lot better that somebody was actually being there for me and helping me out and giving me advice which is what they did.

Its really really important from an occupational therapy point of view to ensure that we have a really open, transparent with the individual, with the workplace and with the insurance company to make sure we have a consistent approach and that everybody understands first and foremost Brians needs, challenges and of course his strengths in order to support him in the best possible way.

Rehabilitation support is available to employees insured under Aviva Group Income Protection. It's a non-contractual benefit, which Aviva can change or withdraw at any time. 

For more information on Aviva Group Income Protection, contact your employer, financial adviser or use your usual Aviva contact.

Or visit us online, at aviva.co.uk or search Aviva advisers.

I’m, Alex, and I’m 37 years old, I live in Cornwall with my husband, my little girl, and my little dog Elsa.

I work at an insurance brokers, and I was working there full time, and after I’d been working there a few months, my toes started to go numb.

Roll on six weeks later and I’d been waking up every morning and the numbness had been spreading so at that point it was maybe up to the top of my legs. At this point I went to see my GP.

They kind of said I think you’ve got some inflammation in your back; I think it’s a trapped nerve and just sent me away.

And then a couple of weeks after that it all got a bit serious because the numbness had spread up to my waist.

But then they said you need to see a neurologist. And then basically just said that it was anxiety and then sent me home.

Yes, so I took two weeks off and yeah it just kept getting worse. It was at this time that my employer contacted Aviva.

I was fortunate enough to be covered under a Group Income Protection scheme.

They referred my case to Working To Wellbeing.

Working To Wellbeing is an organisation that supports people with long term conditions to be able to self-manage their condition

And we also support people to return to work when ready

So, it’s really important to be able to provide vocational rehabilitation support to people.

We do make sure to focus on someone’s physical health, mental health, and cognitive health, because we know that they all relate to each other.

What’s important to me is to understand the symptoms she was experiencing, the impact of that diagnosis on her day-to-day life and where work fitted in with the whole scenario.

So, I got a really good understanding from that initial call with her about what her needs were.

They were primarily around fatigue and fatigue management, the symptoms she was experiencing around numbness, around the cognitive difficulties she was experiencing. And I started to unpick and understand the relationship between stress and her symptoms and symptom flare up, and what her working situation was. So, we get a sense of what’s going on and what to focus on. We set some goals together on what we wanted to focus on and then we started the clinical health coaching work.

It was the 13th of the month and I was in bay 13 and the medical consultant said your lumber puncture results have come back and it’s showing that you’ve got oligoclonal bands which is suggestive of you having MS.

I went back to work after a week just for one day.  I was so, so tired.

It’s a life changing diagnosis multiple sclerosis, knowing that it’s never going to go away, that there is a deterioration, trying to come to terms with all of that, you really do need some kind of emotional support.

Julie was there to support me to talk through kind of how I was feeling about it and to give me some coping mechanisms as well.

In particular, I remember her being very good at explaining to me how I needed to pace myself.

So, we continued working through different goals that she wanted to achieve and when she was ready, we started to think about gearing up for work.

Starting where she was confident and where she felt she had the capability to do it, and we worked closely with her employer to try and enable that process to make it as smooth as possible for everybody.

At that point the financial support that I’d been getting from my employer ended, and that’s when the claim kicked in with Aviva.

My husband and I have been able to you know, keep our home, we are not having to worry about food, about bills, it’s given us a lot of reassurance and peace of mind.

I have been able to make sure that I’m eating very good quality food, it’s also meant that I have been able to purchase specialist equipment and clothing such as some special hiking boots that help nerve stimulation

If I hadn’t had the financial support there is no way that I’d have been able to have taken advantage of those things, and they have really, really helped me with my condition.

In Alex’s case by the time that we got to the end of our journey together she was back at work for 12 hours, she was managing that process, she was able to communicate her needs to her line manager and her employer and she was sort of better managing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis as well, so she was managing her fatigue and she was managing the relationship between stress, fatigue and the symptoms that were flaring up for her too.

Aviva have continued to support me throughout that time, and they have been topping up my salary.

The policy, I’ve been blown away by it to be honest. To have a family, to have a life and not have to be worrying about financial stresses.

I never ever in a million years would have thought that I would have needed any cover such as the Group Income Protection cover but obviously, I have, I’m living proof of that. I honestly think that it is the best benefit that my employer could have ever given to his employees.

If you’re ill, the worst thing that you can have to deal with is to have that financial stress as well, and the Group Income Protection policy has just taken that away and has just allowed me to focus on managing my condition.

The amount we pay depends upon the type of cover, the payment term and the monthly benefit amount chosen.

For more information on Aviva Group Income Protection, contact your employer, Financial Adviser, or your usual Aviva contact.

Or visit us online, at aviva.co.uk or search Aviva advisers.

So my name’s Marlena, and I’m 25 years old, I am a Protection Adviser and I have been advising now for just over 5 years.

I speak to my clients every single day, why they need protection and why it’s so important and one day I just thought Marlena you need to take your own advice.

Because when you are fit and healthy you just never know if it’s going to stay that way or if something’s going to happen in the future.

Usually I’m quite bubbly, I’m really outgoing, I love socialising, going out with my friends. But I just started to feel more run down.

Um, so I did think actually this is not like me. So I turned to my Doctors and I told them the symptoms that I was feeling. So, one of the symptoms was, you know, migraines, nosebleeds, just feeling like you’ve got no energy whatsoever even though I’ve just woken up.

But they did kind of say, have you considered long Covid but I just felt within myself no, this is just not right how I’m feeling so I did turn to my Aviva policy for support.

So within my policy, I’ve got an amazing benefit called DigiCare+ which includes a lot of benefits such as annual health check, a private doctors appointment and also dietician sessions.

But I just thought to myself, actually the main one that I need is the annual health check, first, which is a really quick finger prick test, and then after that I’ve had a full report come back to me within days which showed me exactly what potentially could be wrong.

And I went on my app and really quickly I managed to get an appointment, which was a video appointment with a Doctor and they were able to explain to me what the results meant.

Probably one of the biggest concerns was my white blood cells, which we didn’t understand why they were so low. I felt it was really important to go and get that checked out.

So I’ve called my Doctors just to say that I did go privately to have a look at what was going on.

After I’ve explained my results roughly they actually said OK maybe you do need to be seen by a Doctor, which really did open a lot of doors because the next day I had a blood test and they’ve said we need to go and investigate it further.

Once they referred me to the hospital, they then diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome.

And obviously I felt like that was actually one of my most stressful and anxious times.

I’m quite an anxious person as it is and then knowing that actually, you might not be OK was just another level of anxiety.

So within my DigiCare+ you do also have some counselling sessions included.

It was really nice just to speak to someone and again feel like you are being heard and they are listening to you.

I feel like without that DigiCare+ I would not be able to get to the bottom of my health.

With me having such a great experience with using DigiCare+,

it makes the conversation with my client a lot better because they can really see the value of the benefit.

For more information on Aviva protection products and the wellbeing services available,

visit us online or speak to your financial adviser or your employer.

The annual Health Check and the digital GP services are wellbeing services that are available with the Aviva DigiCare+ app that is accessible with all eligible Aviva Protection products,

and the Aviva DigiCare+ Workplace app that is accessible with Aviva Group Protection products.

The apps and services mentioned are provided by Square Health.

They are non-contractual benefits that Aviva can change or withdraw at any time.

Terms, usage limits and residency restrictions apply. 

I’m Gregg Parker, I live over in Redditch with my partner Kate. We’ve got a little girl, Frankie, who’s eight, and that’s my family.

I work as a sales manager in mortgage services which I’ve done for nearly twenty years now.

I’d been having problems with my foot for a few years, getting progressively worse. It was getting to a point where roughly every three months it would keep me off my feet for about a week.

And at the time I was going to the GP to try and work out what was wrong with it ultimately.

Initially they thought it could be ill-fitting shoes, but obviously the pain kept coming back. They sent me for x-rays but that again didn’t return any results and they were looking for kind of an underlying break or fracture or something along those lines, that wasn’t the case.

When I wasn’t getting any immediate answers on the problem with my foot, I remembered through the Aviva protection cover, that I could go through the annual health check.

It was really easy to order the health check through the app, on doing so I think it asked for a couple of basic measurements and then I would send off for the kit and it arrived within a couple of days.

The test itself was pretty straightforward. It was just a pin prick on the finger, drawing a few drops of blood, which I didn’t find too bad to do at all and then that was sent back obviously for analysis. And two or three days later I got like a PDF on an email, and you can access the same thing through the app with the results.

There was different things they were testing for, and one of those was gout. Which was ultimately is what it highlighted in me being outside of the normal range.

It also gave me the option of having an online consultation with a GP to discuss the results of the test.

The consultation itself was a video call, so it felt really personable, and really easy to do. So that was about a day or two after I’d had the results back and I was having that consultation with that GP.

We all know what it’s like trying to get a GP appointment these days and that’s nothing I had to worry about, so it made it really simple.

And through conversation with that GP, and what I was telling him about the issues with my foot, and the results of the test they then advised to return to my GP with that information, which ultimately got me the right diagnosis.

So, i guess in terms of the DigiCare app, these things would cost a fair amount of money if paid for privately.

Having used it I suppose the ease, the experience, the quickness of getting the results through and how easy that was to do made it a really simple process.

I’ll be looking to do the health check annually moving forward. I have just done the recent one and obviously I guess because of the medication I’m on it was pleasing to see the gout was within the normal range, so obviously the medication is doing its job.

Without the benefit of the DigiCare app and the results of the health check, I guess the problems with the foot would have continued, possibly even got worse, and I’m not really sure if I’d have got to this point today, whether I’d have had a result, an outcome, and it would have started to impact on being able to work.

It seems quite a small thing, but quite a life changing thing if you consider where it could have gone.

For more information on Aviva protection products and the wellbeing services available, visit us online or speak to your financial adviser or your employer.

The Annual Health Check and Digital GP service are wellbeing services available with the Aviva DigiCare+ app, that is accessible with Aviva Protection products, and the Aviva DigiCare+ Workplace app, that is accessible with Aviva Group Protection products. 

The apps and services are provided by Square Health.

They are non-contractual benefits that Aviva can change or withdraw at any time.  Terms and residency restrictions apply.