Why am I not receiving CCS?
Child Care Subsidy (CCS) significantly reduces your out-of-pocket costs. If you are not getting CCS, please follow the checklist below:
1) Have you registered with Centrelink?
Each child must be registered with Centrelink, and when registered each receives a unique identifier called a CRN. Each child is "linked" to a carer, which could be you and / or your spouse and / or another guardian. Each carer has a unique CRN.
If you wish to claim Child Care Subsidy you will need to undergo an activity test to determine your entitlement. The assessment depends upon factors such as combined family income and fortnightly hours worked. More details can be found here.
Upon completing your assessment, you will receive a letter from Centrelink confirming your CCS% and eligible hours.
Prior to July 2018, the Child Care Rebate provided 50% fee relief regardless of income. This approach no longer continues.
2) Have you entered details correctly into LookedAfter?
Four items of identifying information are sent to Centrelink to process Child Care Subsidy. These four items are:
- CRN for the linked primary carer;
- Date of Birth for the linked primary carer;
- CRN for the child;
- Date of Birth for the child.
If any of these items are missing or entered incorrectly, CCS will not process. PLEASE CHECK THESE INPUTS CAREFULLY within your LookedAfter account.
If you realise that you had entered incorrect data, please let us know immediately.
3) Have you signed a CWA?
You must agree to a Complying Written Arrangement (CWA) if you wish to claim CCS. You do this within your LookedAfter account (look under Profile / Fee Agreement). If you take no action or sign a Relevant Agreement (RA), Child Care Subsidy will not process.
Child Care Subsidy cannot process for sessions prior to when your CWA was first signed.
You should not need to edit your CWA after first creating it. The CWA within your LookedAfter account will update automatically to reflect new information such as an additional child or missing CRN information.
4) Have you approved your enrolment(s) within MyGov?
When your child first attends a service, an "enrolment" is created and this governs the payment of CCS for these attendances.
If you supplied correct CRN / DOB information for the child and the primary carer, and if you have signed a CWA, your child's enrolment will have an initial status of Pending. Child Care Subsidy will only process for Confirmed enrolments.
To convert the status from Pending to Confirmed, you must approve the enrolment(s) within your MyGov account. Usually you will receive an email notifying you of a new MyGov message, but this doesn't always happen so please check your MyGov account (Centrelink section) from time to time.
- If you have multiple children, you must confirm the enrolment FOR EACH CHILD.
- If your child attends more than one service location, you must confirm the enrolment FOR EACH SERVICE.
- If your child has not attended a service location within the previous eight (8) weeks, the enrolment will lapse and you will need to confirm a new enrolment upon the child's next attendance.
Due to the unpredictable nature of OSHC bookings, we create enrolments assuming a casual booking schedule. The enrolment you are asked to approve within your MyGov account might show just one day per week, and it might show a start date of now rather than when you signed your CWA. Please approve it if you recognise the service provider, as we can backdate the enrolment start date to the CWA signing date after you have approved the enrolment.
You are given a choice to approve or dispute each enrolment. If you dispute an enrolment, this will cause significant delay to processing Child Care Subsidy.
After approving enrolments, you can decide within your MyGov how to allocate your permitted hours between each service provider.
Centrelink provide a step-by-step guide to approving emrolments in the link below:
5) For when are you intending to claim CCS?
Centrelink will typically backdate Child Care Subsidy only for the previous 28 days. If you are seeking to claim CCS for earlier attendances, you should contact Centrelink directly as we are unlikely to be able to assist.
We generate invoices fortnightly in arrears, and we credit Child Care Subsidy to your LookedAfter account before generating your invoice. Please check your invoice immediately to see if CCS has been applied.
Still having problems?
If you have followed the checklist above and CCS is still missing for your child, please contact us immediately so that we can investigate on your behalf.
For avoidance of doubt, you are responsible for paying your invoices in full at all times regardless of whether or not Child Care Subsidy has been applied to your account.