Shared care eligibility for family assistance and Paid Parental Leave scheme payments 007-02040000

FTB can be shared between customers based on the percentage of time the child spends in each customer's care and whether the child is considered an FTB child. A person must have actual care of a child for at least 35% of the time to receive FTB for the child.

• Customers with more than 65% actual care of a child will receive 100% FTB for the child
• Customers with 35-65% actual care of a child will receive some FTB for the child based on their actual care of the child and applying the percentage of shared care used for family assistance
• Customers with 14-34% actual care of a child will not receive FTB for the child but may be eligible for ancillary benefits for the child. The child is considered to be a Regular Care Child of the customer
• Customers with less than 14% actual care of a child will not receive FTB for the child or be entitled to any ancillary benefits

The percentage recorded must be a whole number - rounding rules for actual care percentage apply. The percentage of shared care used for family assistance will determine the amount of FTB payable.

FTB rate components are calculated using the shared care percentage for an FTB child (at least 35% actual care), except for Rent Assistance (RA), Single Income Family Supplement (SIFS) and Newborn Supplement (NBS).

For children born or adopted on or after 1 July 2023, claimants must have care of the child on their PPL days. Customers do not need to have 'primary care' of the child on their PPL days, just 'care'.

As more than one customer can have care of a child on a day, multiple customers can claim PPL on the same day. There is a maximum of 10 concurrent dates per child. This means customers can take a maximum of 10 PPL days for the same child on the same day.

The birth mother must give approval to claim and approval to share days for:

• the partner of the birth mother
• the other parent
• the partner of the other parent

In cases of adoption, where there is:

• one adoptive parent, they must give approval to claim and approval to share PPL days to any other claimant (that is, partner of the adoptive parent)
• two adoptive parents, the first adoptive parent to claim must give approval to share PPL days to the other adoptive parent. They do not need to give approval to claim

For children born or adopted before 1 July 2023 in a shared care situation, PPL will only be paid to the primary carer. If more than 1 carer lodges a claim for PPL, Services Australia will determine who will be the primary carer to receive PPL. Generally, the birth or adoptive mother will be the primary carer.

PPL cannot be shared and must be paid to 1 person who is the primary carer. Therefore, if the care is 50/50 the agency will make determination based on primary carer first. If neither carer is birth mother, a decision will be made in favour of the carer with workforce connections. Carers will be notified of the decision in writing.

Shared care assessments can affect a customer’s eligibility for CCS/ACCS. In addition to being liable to pay child care fees for the child, the child must be a FTB or Regular care child of the customer. To be:

• a regular care child, the child must be in the customer’s care 14% to 34%
• an FTB child, care is at least 35%

This means the customer or their current partner must have at least 14% care of the child to be eligible for CCS/ACCS.

Note: from 27 June 2022, where a CCS customer is partnered, and does not meet care requirements, the system will automatically check if their current partner has the child/ren coded in their care (ICC) with 14% care or more.

If a care determination is not already in place on the customers record, one would need to be completed as part of their CCS/ACCS new claim. Each person liable for the child care fees needs to have claimed CCS/ACCS separately to have their eligibility assessed.

For a particular session of child care, CCS/ACCS can only be paid to 1 person.

A child can be a PP child of only 1 customer at a time. This means only 1 customer can be paid PP for a child. In most cases, this will be the customer who has the greater degree of care and control.

For customers receiving a social security payment, shared care assessment details need to be recorded separately to ensure the correct rate of payment is made. Customers may be entitled to a higher rate of benefit even if they are not considered the principal carer.

For customers receiving Carer Allowance (CA) and family assistance payments and/or PP for a shared care child, shared care for CA must be recorded separately.

Baby Bonus (BBY) could be paid for a child born or entrusted into care as part of the adoption process before 1 March 2014. The rate of BBY was not affected by the level of shared care of the child. BBY was generally paid to the birth mothers. If a change of care occurred, the rate of BBY could be apportioned according to the period the child was in each person's care during the BBY assessment period. Birth mothers could continue to receive BBY instalments if they relinquished care of the child after the birth, for example for respite.

Maternity Immunisation Allowance (MIA) was discontinued from 1 July 2012. MIA could be shared between customers according to the percentage of actual care in the assessment period.

Before 1 July 2008, a customer had to have at least 10% actual care to receive an equivalent rate of FTB for the child, or to be eligible for other family assistance for the child. Customers received a percentage of the FTB Part A child rate and Part B rate that applied.