1.1.P.416 Principal carer - shared care

Summary

The provisions of SSAct subsection 5(18) mean that only 1 person at a time can be the principal carer (1.1.P.412) of a child. In all shared care situations (PP, JSP, YA (job seeker) and SpB), it is necessary to determine which of the carers is the principal carer.

In all cases where care is shared a written determination must be made which:

• specifies 1 of the adults as the principal carer of the child
• is provided to each adult, and
• is made EVEN if only 1 person has claimed income support.

If the care of a child is being shared by 2 people and only 1 of them has legal responsibility for the day-to-day care, welfare and development of the young person, and the young person is in the adult's care, only that person is the principal carer.

Principal carer status & legal responsibility

Care should be taken to ensure that it is not assumed that a child is always the dependent child of their parent, but the assessment should fully explore whether the person legally responsible for the child is actually providing care for the child. In some cases grandparents or relatives who have taken on responsibility of caring for the child where the parent is unable or unwilling to care for the child can be determined to be principal carers.

1 person provides greater degree of care

As SSAct subsection 5(19) does not list any specific criteria that should or should not be taken into account in making a determination, all the circumstances of each case need to be considered. However, given that the principal carer determination is based upon majority care of a child, it will generally be appropriate to decide that the person providing the greater degree of care is the principal carer, EVEN if that person has not claimed income support.

Equal care

If the difference in the level of care provided by the 2 carers is less than 10%, care is considered to be shared equally.

In situations of equal care where only 1 of the carers is claiming or receiving income support, that person should be determined as the principal carer. If both carers are claiming or receiving income support, the carer who is most in need of a favourable determination should be deemed principal carer.

A decision maker MUST take into account the following factors when deciding which carer is in most need of a favourable determination:

• whether 1 carer already qualifies as principal carer of another child (see below for further detail on determinations involving more than 1 child)
• whether only 1 carer would be eligible for PP
• which carer would receive the higher rate of payment
• any other sources of income the carers may have, whether actual or potential, including both employment and investment income
  • Note: If either carer has income that fluctuates, the assessment officer may need to look at average income levels over an extended period of time, such as 12 weeks, and
• the asset levels of each carer.

The following factors MAY be taken into consideration by the decision maker, if further information is required to make the determination:

• the expenses of each carer

  • Example: Rent, child care

• workforce experience, education levels and future employment prospects of each carer
• the duration that each carer has been on income support and their principal carer status during this time. If there are no substantial differences between the parties, then generally the determination should be favoured which maintains the 'status quo', and
• any other factors considered relevant by the decision maker.

Equal care - same decision applies to each child

If the care arrangements for 2 or more children are identical, it is NOT appropriate to 'allocate' each parent as the principal carer of a child, thus enabling both parents to qualify for income support as a principal carer. Different determinations about which parent is the principal carer of each child should only be made if the circumstances relating to the care of the children are not the same, and justify a different decision.

In order to make a determination about which parent is the principal carer of each child, each child must be assessed separately based on the care arrangements applying to them. If the care arrangements for each child are the same, then the determinations as to which parent is the principal carer must also be the same. That is, if parent A is determined as the principal carer of child 1, and the care arrangements for child 2 are the same, then parent A must also be determined as the principal carer for child 2. This is because the same factors leading to the first decision also apply to the second.

In general it would only be appropriate to allocate a principal carer to each child where the children's care arrangements are sufficiently different to warrant this.

Change in existing shared care - different principal carer

To avoid a debt being created for payments received before the determination is made, if a person is already receiving income support as a principal carer after the commencement of shared care (or a decrease in the degree of shared care) and before a determination has been made under SSAct subsection 5(19), consideration should be given to making different determinations for the period before and after the date of determination. This would only be necessary if the application of subsection 5(19) will result in a change of the determination as to who is the principal carer. In this situation, different determinations should be made if:

• the degree of shared care is approximately equal, or
• the current recipient has the lesser degree of care, and
  • the recipient has not made a false statement and has complied with the notification requirements relating to shared care, and
  • the other carer is not reliant on a favourable determination to be the principal carer for the period before the date of determination.