Cancellation of Child Care Subsidy (CCS) 007-17103130

Automatic cancellation of CCS occurs following reassessments where no continuing entitlement exists, for example, when a child leaves care. If a change in circumstance is recorded and the customer is no longer entitled to CCS, payment will be automatically cancelled from the date of effect of the change in circumstance.

From 11 July 2022, if:

• a customer is in receipt of CCS for a child, and
• the child has not attended a session of child care (including allowable absences), for which the customer is responsible for paying at least once in the previous 26 week period, then
• the customer may cease to be eligible for CCS for the child. This is known as the ’26 week rule’

Note: the 26 week rule counts sessions of care for each child and CCS eligible individual separately. If a child is in a shared care arrangement, each carer's eligibility for CCS is based on the last reported session of care the child has under each CCS eligible individual.

Where a child’s CCS is cancelled due to the 26 week rule, the cancellation will apply from the CCS Monday following the 26th week. In some circumstances, it may be more than 26 weeks. The cancellation cannot be retrospectively applied before 11 July 2022. Where a child is the last CCS eligible child of a customer, the customers CCS will cancel.

If a family is entitled to Higher CCS for one or more of their children and one of their children is cancelled because of the 26 week rule:

• their CCS entitlement will be reassessed, and
• any higher CCS rate changes will apply from the next CCS Monday

Customers will need to lodge a new claim for CCS if their child starts attending child care again.

See the Resources page for:

• examples of the 26 week rule, and
• how the 26 weeks are calculated

Manual cancellation occurs when a Service Officer makes a decision to cancel a customer's payment based on the applicable section of Family Assistance Law and codes the cancellation.

CCS customers may ask to cancel their CCS and/or ACCS payments, at the child level or customer level. Tell them:

• once cancelled, CCS/ACCS cannot be restored and a new claim must be made
• a lump sum claim of CCS is not available
• if the customer is requesting a cancellation as they are concerned about an overpayment, they may want to increase their withholdings
• cancelling CCS for the eldest child aged 5 or under may impact their CCS % for any younger children

The process for ceasing ACCS is included in the relevant ACCS Operational Blueprint file. Links are included in the Related links section below.

Where it is determined that CCS was incorrectly cancelled, it will not automatically reassess after the appropriate corrective action has been taken. For example if a:

• child is incorrectly coded out of the customer’s care, or
• primary school aged child is incorrectly recorded as attending secondary school

A Social Online Application (SOA) is required to reassess the customer’s entitlement from the appropriate date. See Processing Child Care Subsidy (CCS) claims for indexing a SOA and assessing the claim.

The customer will be required to lodge a new claim if:

• the cancellation was correct based on the information provided, and
• the customer had a change of circumstances to regain eligibility, e.g. child left the customer’s care and re-enters the customer’s care