Income Management customers accessing funds while travelling 103-01040050

This document outlines how to help Income Management customers when they are travelling and how they can access their available funds.

Travel and Income Management

Income Management customers are still required to meet their priority needs such as accommodation, food, clothing, medical expenses and transport costs while travelling. This can include expenses in their home location or their current location.

Customers may require payments to be made to contracted or uncontracted Third Party Organisations in an area they are visiting. These payments are generally in the form of one-off payments and may include the following uncontracted payment methods:

Scheduled Transfer
BPAY®
Credit card (used for urgent and immediate requests for expenses like food and travel)

During the period of travel, particularly when travelling overseas, it may be necessary for a portion of the customer's income managed funds to be paid directly to them by way of a Restricted Direct Payment (RDP). RDPs are assessed by the Income Management Policy helpdesk.

Contact prior to travel

Income managed customers are encouraged to contact Services Australia before travelling to discuss how they can access their income managed funds to meet their priority needs while travelling.

When the customer contacts, Service Officers will also discuss with them whether any regular expense allocations need to be varied or suspended during the period of travel.

BasicsCard

Income managed customers who have a BasicsCard can use their BasicsCard when travelling. They should be advised to take their BasicsCard with them.

BasicsCards are accepted at approved BasicsCard merchants across Australia, which includes a large number of National BasicsCard merchants.

Locating Income Management and BasicsCard merchants

Customers can use a search tool on the Services Australia website and the Locator tool on the Express Plus mobile app to search for approved Income Management and BasicsCard merchants in a specified area.

For information on how to use this search tool, see Business and organisation search tools.

Hardship

Service Officers should always consider the full range of options available to help any customer in hardship or urgent need, such as:

referral to specialist officers including Indigenous Service Officers (ISO), Multicultural Service Officers (MSO) and social workers
referral to external support services and/or
issuing an urgent payment

The Resources page contains links to the following:

Find a business or organisation tool for customers
Contact details for IMPACT and the Income Management Policy Helpdesk
Income Management intranet page
Income Management Organisations intranet page
BasicsCard intranet page
State Income Management Co-ordinators and Income Management Contact Officers (IMCO) intranet page, and
Locator