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Integrated care - Gathering additional information and evidence 277-03060040



This page explains the process for obtaining additional information to assist in making a care determination.

Integrated Care

Integrated Care and Complex Care Service Officers

  • Manage care changes across Child Support and Centrelink Programs:
    • Disagreed (where there is no pending Child Support registration)
    • Disputed
  • Actual care in special circumstances
  • Implement Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) care decisions for Child Support:
    • initial review (ART1)
    • second review (ART2)
  • Implement Authorised Review Officer (ARO) care decisions (when Integrated Care was the original decision maker)

Integrated Care and Complex Care Service Officers

  • Give a holistic case-managed approach for disagreed and disputed care change
  • Make sure care is accurate in the Child Support and Centrelink systems
  • Assess the impacts of the care change on:
    • Family Assistance
    • Child Care Subsidy
    • Child Support
    • Income Support Payments
  • Refer for action as appropriate
  • Give details to services such as:
    • community support organisations
    • government departments

To action a change in care notification, see Integrated Care - Notification and recording of change in care.

Note: contact Operational Blueprint to get old versions of care procedures.

Integrated Care activities

In Scope

  • Disagreed and Disputed Care
  • Implement Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) care decisions for Child Support:
    • initial review (ART1)
    • second review (ART2)
  • Implement Authorised Review Officer (ARO) care decisions (when Integrated Care was the original decision maker)
  • Actual Care in Special Circumstances (ACSC) determinations
  • Alignment of care across dual systems, including Manual Follow up Activities (MFUs)
  • Child Support Customer Management Approach and Centrelink Business Imperatives. The Resources page contains a link to the Business Imperatives homepage
  • Families Income Estimates and Child Support Estimates
  • Payment and Service Finder
  • Shared Care assessments in Customer First
  • Change of Care assessments in Customer First
  • Principal Carer Determinations
  • Family Tax Benefit (FTB) instalment and lump sum claims
  • FTB Add Child assessments
  • Discuss impacts on Child Care Subsidy (CCS)
  • CCS Reconciliation Dashboard
  • Applying Section 24 provisions

Out of Scope

  • International cases where one parent resides overseas
  • Personalised Services
  • Deceased Customers/Child
  • New Child Support registrations
  • Income Support new claims (NCL) and Benefit Transfers
  • Double Orphan Pension (DOP), Dad and Partner Pay (DAP) and Parental Leave Pay (PPL) claims
  • FTB newborn claims (with Newborn Child Declaration FA081)
  • Child Care Subsidy new claims
  • Foster Care and Health Care Cards
  • Other specialist work. For example, Member of a Couple Assessments (MOCA) in Centrelink and Change of Assessment (COA) in Child Support

Roles and responsibilities

Integrated Care Service Officers

Integrated Care Service Officers manage disagreed care referrals for Services Australia. Responsibilities are to:

  • apply the change in care details to the customer's relevant assessment(s) in Child Support and Centrelink systems
  • investigate care
  • make and give effect to care determinations
  • correct data exchange errors
  • address results from the change in care such as:
    • restart a case when a customer has applied during the care change process and the case is ending because of a late notified care change
    • reversal of customer roles for child support
    • add relevant dependent child/ren to related child support assessment/s
    • add Family Tax Benefit (FTB) eligible child/ren to a current FTB assessment (excluding newborns)
    • process FTB new claims (excluding newborns) or tell the customer they need to lodge a new claim for a child
    • tell customers of impacts on Child Care Subsidy (CCS) and Income Support Payments
    • discuss CCS Reconciliation outcomes
    • identify eligibility for additional family assistance and/or ancillary benefit options for customers with a Regular Care Child
    • discuss the impact a care suspension period has on both Child Support and FTB
    • discuss the impact a care terminating event has on both Child Support and FTB
    • refer the customer to the Agreements and Court order team if a child support agreement applies and the payee ceases to be an eligible carer

Complex Care Service Officers

Complex Care Service Officers in the Integrated Care Smart Centre manage disputed care referrals and complex care determinations. Responsibilities are to:

  • apply the change in care details to the customer's relevant assessment(s) in Child Support and Centrelink systems
  • investigate care
  • check and review Disputed Care referrals and consider if Actual Care in Special Circumstances (ACSC) applies
  • make and give effect to care determinations
  • make and give effect to ACSC determinations, see References page for link to Child Support Guide 2.2.4 Disputed Care arrangements
  • implement Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) care decisions for Child Support
  • implement Authorised Review Officer (ARO) Review of Decisions (when Integrated Care was the original decision maker)
  • correct data exchange errors
  • address results from the change in care such as:
    • restart a case when a customer has applied during the care change process and the case is ending because of a late notified care change
    • reversal of customer roles for child support
    • add relevant dependent child/ren to related child support assessment/s
    • add Family Tax Benefit (FTB) eligible child/ren to a current FTB assessment (excluding newborns)
    • process FTB new claims (excluding newborns) or tell the customer they need to lodge a new claim for a child
    • tell customers of impacts on CCS and Income Support Payments
    • discuss CCS Reconciliation outcomes
    • identify eligibility for additional family assistance and/or ancillary benefit options for customers with a Regular Care Child
    • discuss the impact a care suspension period has on both Child Support and FTB
    • discuss the impact a care terminating event has on both Child Support and FTB
    • refer the customer to the Agreements and Court order team if a child support agreement applies and the payee ceases to be an eligible carer

Integrated Care Customer Management

Service Officers in Integrated Care work in both the Centrelink and Child Support programs. The following customer management processes apply:

Note: the 'Ready to Work' option in Customer First allocates work to Integrated Care Subject Matter Expert (SME). Some Operational Blueprint content refers to locating SME work via a report. This is not the process for Integrated Care.

Real-time expectations

While on the phone with a customer, Service Officers will complete the above activities and any other items within scope to finalise or progress as far as possible. This would generally not include Family Tax Benefit (FTB) new claims unless the customer is experiencing financial hardship.

Integrated Care Service Officers must check routing of the SCT Referral intray (or other SCT intrays) on both customers. If the SCT intray are:

  • already routed to an Integrated Care Service Officer, lock relevant customers to that Service Officer
  • routed to a team’s none position, lock customer to that team’s none position
  • not allocated and sitting in the Z – DISAGREED REFERRALS Cuba position. The receiving Integrated Care Service Officer will keep ownership and lock customers in dual systems as appropriate

The Resources page contains links, examples and resources to assist with Integrated Care decisions and management.

Integrated care

Integrated care - Complex care

Integrated care - Managing issues after care determination

Integrated care - Notification and recording of change in care

Integrated care - Making and recording care determination