New compliance arrangements – Legislation passed – DEEWR provider advice
Date published :
21
June
2011
As legislation has now been passed, from 1 July
2011 the compliance framework will be enhanced to provide
additional incentives for job seekers to re-engage and to fully
participate.
There will be a system release on the weekend of 2 and 3 July
2011, so that on Monday 4 July 2011 you will
notice some slight changes in the system.
Suspension of payment
- Under the new arrangements, if you choose to submit a
Participation Report (PR) when a job seeker misses an appointment
or when they have disengaged from an activity, the job seeker's
payment will be immediately suspended by Centrelink unless they
have an identified vulnerability. The relevant PRs are:
- CFAP - failure to attend appointment with provider;
- CFAO - failure to attend appointment (Other);and
- NFAA - failure to attend activity specified in the Employment
Pathway Plan (this will trigger suspension only where a Provider
has indicated in the mandatory question for this PR that the job
seeker has become disengaged from an activity).
- As soon as the job seeker agrees to attend a re-scheduled
appointment with you, their payment will be restored with full back
pay. The PR will also be processed as normal and the job seeker may
incur a failure, but all job seekers will be required to attend a
rescheduled appointment with you regardless of the outcome of the
PR.
- If the job seeker then fails to show up for their next
appointment with you, their payment will again be suspended once
you enter a 'Did not Attend - invalid' result in the electronic
diary (this includes job seekers with an identified vulnerability).
Centrelink will also undertake their normal reconnection failure
determination, which means that, if the job seeker did not have a
reasonable excuse, they will start to lose payment until they
attend a further appointment with you (ie. they will not be back
paid for this period). Any such penalty will be deducted from their
very next payment.
Procedural/System
changes:
- Suspension of payment following a failure to attend an
appointment will be automated within the Centrelink system once a
relevant PR is submitted and there will be no impact on processing
for providers. You still have the discretion to take alternative
action to re-engage a job seeker instead of submitting a PR and you
are encouraged to do so.
- You will be asked a new mandatory Yes or No question in the
workflow for the No Show No Pay (NSNP) PR (for failing to attend an
activity specified in the Employment Pathway Plan) to indicate if
you believe the job seeker has become disengaged from an activity
and you want them re-engaged back with you. If Yes is ticked, the
job seeker's income support payment may be suspended and they will
be re-engaged with you (Centrelink will also determine if a NSNP
failure should be applied).
- The job seeker will be re-engaged back with you. The
re-engagement appointment will have a new 'reason' identifying that
the re-engagement appointment has been made due to the job seeker
becoming disengaged from their activity.
Reasonable Excuse
The definition of reasonable excuse has been tightened to
provide that, regardless of the job seeker's reason for failing to
attend their appointment or activity, if they could reasonably have
been expected to notify their employment services provider (or
Centrelink, if they arranged the appointment) in advance of why
they could not attend, but fail to do so, they will not be taken to
have had a reasonable excuse for the failure.
System change:
You will be asked a new mandatory Yes or No question in the PR
workflow for the following PRs to indicate if a job seeker made
contact prior to the appointment to advise why they could not
attend:
-
- CFAP - failure to attend appointment with provider;
- CFAO - failure to attend appointment (Other);
- NFAA - failure to attend appointment specified in the EPP (No
Show No Pay);and
- NFJI - failure to attend a job interview.
Transition into the new arrangements
Providers will need to ensure they are aware of the requirements
for transition into the new compliance arrangements. Providers
should:
- read the new fact sheet available on the Provider Portal
(Compliance page) titled 'Transition to the new arrangements' and
the updated reference material; and
- work through the updated compliance modules on the Learning
Centre.
Important points to note
- You must ensure you have sufficient re-engagement
sessions available at all times across all sites within
the online diary to enable Centrelink to re-engage job seekers
quickly and smoothly under these new arrangements.
- You will still have the choice whether or not you wish to
submit a PR in most circumstances and you can use the Contact
Request arrangements when you want to contact a job seeker without
taking any compliance action.
- You will need to ensure your job seekers are aware of the
requirement to give prior notice of their inability to attend
appointments or activities. You should take an individual's level
of awareness and understanding of this requirement into account
when deciding if you wish to submit a PR under the new
arrangements.
- You will need to take account of the individual circumstances
of the job seeker and the impact of any known vulnerability in
considering whether to submit a PR or to simply reschedule the
appointment.
- You can ask Centrelink to review a job seeker's record if you
believe the job seeker is unable to meet their requirements due to
a potential vulnerability.
Further information on these changes can be located via ECSN
Provider Portals:
- Stream Services > Client Information >
Compliance; or
- DES > Client Information > Participant
Compliance.
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