Restoration of Double Orphan Pension (DOP) 007-06020030

The need to restore DOP usually occurs when a customer's qualification for DOP has been re-established after a cancellation. This can happen:

• as a result of changes in the customer's circumstances
• because of a review of a Services Australia decision
• after specified events that have temporarily made them ineligible for payment, or
• the customer has provided more information about their circumstances

When restoring a customer's DOP payment, it is imperative to re-establish the customer's eligibility and to recommence payment from the date the customer became eligible again. If there have been changes in the customer's circumstances, an update of the relevant information on the system needs to be done before restoring the payment, to avoid incorrect arrears being generated.

If the period of cancellation has been greater than 13 weeks, DOP cannot be restored and the customer will need to lodge a new claim which will be subject to normal DOP new claim backdating provisions.

Restorations of DOP are processed by DOP Smart Centre Processing.

If the customer has continued to be qualified and has retained payability for their payment during the period of cancellation, their payment may be restored with full arrears.

This may be the case even when the customer recontacts more than 13 weeks after the decision to cancel. This is because the customer would be taken not to have received advice of the decision to cancel if they were not at their known address and/or advice of the decision was returned to Services Australia.

This means that the date of effect of the favourable determination (restoration) resulting from review of the decision to cancel is the date of the original decision (date of cancellation), as per the Legislation. See the References page for more information.

Each customer's circumstances must be looked at individually to determine whether they could be taken not to have received advice of the decision to cancel, and whether they retained qualification and payability during the period, and therefore receive arrears upon restoration.