IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE CHILD CARE SUBSIDY

To all our customers

We have provided below some very important information we received today from the “Australian Government Department of Education & Training”.  Please note that there are items listed below that you may need to complete with the government to ensure you are not be charged full fee for your children’s care.

Parents who previously claimed lump sum payments
The new Child Care Subsidy cannot be claimed as a lump sum at the end of the 2018-19 financial year.
If families who claimed Child Care Benefit or Child Care Rebate as a lump sum in the past still have child/ren attending child care, they will need to submit a new claim for Child Care Subsidy as soon as possible to avoid paying full fees. Families should sign into their Centrelink online account through myGov and complete a Child Care Subsidy claim.
Centrelink can backdate payments for care provided up to 28 days before the date the family submitted their claim.
Families can still submit a lump sum claim for Child Care Benefit or Child Care Rebate for any approved child care used in the 2017-18 financial year. These claims need to be submitted by 30 June 2019.

More information about the new Child Care Subsidy for parents can be found here.

When subsidy may be paid directly to parents
While Child Care Subsidy/Additional Child Care Subsidy (CCS/ACCS) is generally paid to providers to pass on to parents as a fee reduction, it may need to be paid directly to parents in some specific scenarios, particularly where there is a change in circumstances after session reports have been submitted. For example:

• A service submits a child’s session report for a fortnight containing 32 hours of care, even though the parent’s CCS entitlement is 24 hours of subsidy per fortnight (family income is $66,958 or less and one or both parents do not meet or are not exempt from the activity test).
• The session report is processed and 24 hours of CCS is paid to the service, with the parent paying the full fee for the additional 8 hours of care.
• The following week, the parent updates their activity test details in their Centrelink Online account (through myGov) to indicate they started a new job the week before, which means their entitlement is now 36 hours per fortnight.
• Because the change benefits the parent, it can be backdated up to a maximum of 28 days before they notified Centrelink of the change.
• In this example, the change in the parent’s entitlement for the previous week, from 24 to 36 hours of subsidised care per fortnight, will trigger a reassessment of that week’s session report.
• The payment for the additional 8 hours of CCS will be made directly to the parent, because the parent’s entitlement changed after the relevant session report had already been submitted.

Parents will also be paid directly when a provider has submitted session reports before the parent has either lodged their CCS claim for that child, or before the parent has confirmed the enrolment for that child. In these scenarios the enrolment status will be ‘pending eligibility’ or ‘pending confirmation’, meaning session reports can be submitted but will not be processed. Once the parent completes the required action/s, these session reports will be processed and any resulting payment will be made directly to the parent.

In all cases where a payment is made directly to the parent, the parent will be able to see a record of this payment through Centrelink Online or the Express Plus mobile app.