Residence assessment for customers claiming Carer Allowance (CA) 009-03020060

To satisfy the residence criteria for CA, both the customer and their care receiver must:

• be an Australian resident
• generally must be in Australia at the time the claim is lodged, and
• remain an Australian resident throughout the period of payment

In addition to the above, the customer only (not the care receiver) must satisfy a 1 year (52 week) Newly Arrived Resident's Waiting Period (NARWP).

The NARWP was introduced for CA from 1 January 2019 and is determined by the visa subclass and grant date of the customer's first permanent residence visa.

The customer will not have a NARWP if:

• their first permanent residence visa was granted before 1 January 2019, or
• they hold or have held a visa subclass 115, 116, 117, 835, 836, 837 or 852

Otherwise, the customer is required to serve a NARWP of 1 year (52 weeks).

Customers claiming CA whose first permanent residence visa was granted on or after 1 January 2019 are required to have been in Australia as an Australian resident for the duration of the NARWP before CA is payable. Alternatively, they may have an exemption from the NARWP in certain circumstances.

Customers who have recently arrived to live in Australia and are claiming Carer Allowance are required to have been an Australian resident and physically in Australia for the required duration of the NARWP, either in 1 period, or in a number of periods before Carer Allowance is payable. Note: the period of residence required for the NARWP does not need to have occurred immediately before claiming.

Temporary absences from Australia in the waiting period do not restart the NARWP but the days that a customer is overseas do not count towards meeting the NARWP requirements. For example, a customer claiming Carer Allowance may have a 1 year NARWP. If they leave Australia temporarily for 3 weeks the NARWP period does not recommence, but the absence extends the NARWP end date by 3 weeks.

The requirement to have been in Australia for a period or periods totalling the required duration of the NARWP, allows for broken periods of residence in Australia to count if the person continued to be an Australian resident. For example, a customer who has returned to live in Australia after several years living overseas may have previously lived in Australia as an Australian resident. The period of former Australian residence would count towards any current NARWP requirements.

If the customer has not served the NARWP and one of the care receivers is a child under 16, they may still be able to receive Health Care Card (HCC) only CA.

Note: the NARWP only needs to be served once for the applicable payment.

The new claim process will attempt a datalink with the Department of Home Affairs. If successful, the datalink will automatically record a customer's visa and movement information from 1 September 1994, and grants of Australian citizenship where available.

Where the datalink is unsuccessful, the residence information will need to be manually recorded. If Department of Home Affairs has provided the information, it will take precedence over any conflicting information provided by the customer. Once the Department of Home Affairs record is matched with Centrelink, ongoing updates to movement information and visa changes will be automatically recorded on the customer's record.

For current CA customers, it may be necessary to update country of residence, visa information or Australian citizenship details. For help, see Activating the Department of Home Affairs datalink and contingency procedures if datalink is unavailable.

The decision about whether a customer is or was residing in Australia needs to be manually assessed and recorded by the Service Officer. This information is not provided by the datalink.