Hi All . As you read this CCS has been live since July 2018 and CCMS was fully decomissioned finally in Dec 2019. However we have kept this material in this format to help centres if they need to review the changes.

Our transition plan focused on minimising the operational impacts to you and your parents from the changes that took effect with CCS on 2nd July 2018.

Contact Details for CCS Help Desk

Email: ccshelpdesk@education.gov.au Phone: 1300 667 276

Below we have tried to summarise as briefly as possible what you need to know.

What is not live

  • Reporting sign-in/out times became compulsory in January 2019. Digital sign-in is built in to SmartCentral
  • Enrolment forms must be CWA compliant. Your existing enrolment forms may already be compliant if set up correctly. See below.

Known Issues

  • The department won’t accept enrolment arrangements that start in the future so set start date to today but make sure the booking start date reflects when the child really starts.
  • Don’t create the enrolment any more than 14 weeks before the first attendance or it will be exited due to inactivity.
  • If a parent disputes or rejects an enrolment you must submit an update on the enrolment to reactivate it for the parent to confirm once you reach agreement (even if nothing actually changes).

Attendances (Manual review)

If you try to cancel a submitted attendance, which has a session from more than 28 days ago, the attendance will move to MANUAL REVIEW

CCS will manually check the attendance and it then goes to the Dept of Education for review. No further updates are allowed while the attendance is in manual review.

Attendances (CCS Back Paid to Parent)

If the child commences attending before the parent’s claim for elegibility is complete CCS may be back paid up to a maximum of 28 days. Any such back pay will be paid to the parent, not the child care provider.

Cancelling/resubmitting submitted attendances that didnt receive CCS will not pay the CCS to the Service. The CCS, if they are entitled to it, will be paid directly to the Parent without the need to cancel and resubmit.

The parent has to go back to Centrelink if they believe they are entitled to CCS and it hasn’t been paid to either the service or directly to them.

You can check for payements made to parents on the Session Subsidy tab of the enrolment screen. Select the relevant date for the fortnight you wish to check.

CC Provider Handbook - re back paid CCS

See the Child Care provider Handbook here

See the section relating to CCS being paid directly to the parent here

Excerpt from the above link:

Child care providers are not directly involved in the making of a claim for Child Care Subsidy by the individual or their partner. However, the individual or their partner must make a claim, and be determined to be eligible, in order for Child Care Subsidy entitlement to be determined.

The family should create or access their Centrelink online account via www.my.Gov.au to lodge a Child Care Subsidy Claim for their child.

Where possible, providers should encourage parents or carers to lodge their claim before enrolling their child. A Child Care Subsidy claim can stay active for a year without any sessions of care being reported for the child. However, Child Care Subsidy claims can only be backdated to a maximum of 28 days before the claim was made. If a child is enrolled and starts attending care before a claim is made, and the claim is delayed, the individual will not be eligible for Child Care Subsidy for any sessions of care that occurred more than 28 days before.

Providers should note that any subsidy payable for the 28-day period before a claim was made will generally be paid to the individual, not to the provider.

Service Types

For attendances after July 2nd use the rolls and attendances in the CCS service types. They appear in the services menu and also in the service pick lists on the Enrolments , Parents and Children screens. The CCS service types are :

(Z)CDC - Centre based care. This is the old LDC or OCC.
(Z)OSH - Outside School Hours care. All of BSC , ASC and VAC are lumped together here.
(Z)FDC - SmartCentral now also supports Family Day Care

With the retirement of CCMS old services have been removed from the relevant menus but the data has been kept and is accessible from the parent transaction screens.

Daily Rolls

Daily roll generation switched from CCMS services to the CCS services on 2nd July 2018.

Enrolment Types

  • The department has introduced four new enrolment types to replace the existing four enrolment types. They are basically a direct replacement but with an extra complication.

    • Formal -> Complying Written Arrangement (CWA)
    • Informal -> Registered Arrangement (RA) / Complying Written Arrangement (CWA)
    • Service SCCB -> Additional Child Care Subsidy (ACCS)
    • AMEP/Other -> Arrangement with Organisation (OA)
  • Unlike CCMS, a Registered Arrangment cannot be ‘formalised’ into Complying Written Arrangment. However a CWA can be created without CRNs and then have them added later.
  • If a family starts out on an RA then that enrolment must be ended and a new CWA put in place in order to start receiving subsidy. Attendances submitted under the RA will never recieve subsidy.

During migration we automatically converted all Formal and Informal enrolments into CWA enrolments as this gives you and your parents the greatest flexibility.

When you create new enrolments from now on you will need to pick the enrolment type. Make sure you pick an enrolment type that is relevant for your service as both CCMS and CCS types are still currently visible.

You will notice that during migration we have created all informals as ‘formalisable informals’ (ie CWAs).

Enrolment Status

You will see a number of new enrolment status values:

  • RECEIV : The enrolment has been received by CCS. Generally this is where informals will sit.
  • PENDEL = PENDING ELIGIBILITY - Hasnt completed registration for CCS or CCS hasn’t processed the families CCS claim yet. (ie. Parent is yet to receive their entitlement notice with what CCS they are assessed for.)
  • PENDIN : PENDING - Waiting on parent to confirm the enrolment in myGov.
  • DISPUT : Parent has disputed the enrolment. Contact the parent to discuss. Enrolment may be updated by the centre or confirmed by the parent.
  • REJECT : Parent has rejected the enrolment. Contact the parent to discuss. new enrolment will have to be submitted.
  • CONFIR : checks are complete and all ok. Shows in enrolment list as ‘Active’

Updating ‘Disputed’ Enrolments

If a parent disputes an enrolment and after discussion is ok with it you will need to submit an update to DSS with any changes or even if there are no changes. Click ‘Edit , make changes if needed and then click ‘Save’. The parent needs to confirm the update.

Parent Confirmation of Enrolments

Parent confirmation of the enrolment through mgov is essential to receive benefits.

Excerpt from Dept fact sheet.

Parent Confirmation

Download Enrolment Details

The CSV download now includes CCS eligibility details :
- Percentage - Hours - Apportioned Hours - ACCS Hourly Rate Cap Increase Percentage - Annual Cap Reached - Absence Count - Withholding Percentage

Download CSV

OSHC

  • All OSHC enrolments (BSC , ASC , VAC) were combined under a single service. If for example a child attended BSC & ASC there are now 2 sessions under the one enrolment.
  • Enrolments will be deemed exited after 8 weeks without attendance so for VAC only children you will need a new enrolment notice every VAC period.

Subsidy payments

  • Families must confirm their enrolment details with MyGov before they can receive any subsidy payments, they can also dispute enrolments and attendances which may delay subsidy payments.
  • Centres are strongly advised not to assume a parent will receive any subsidy until the payments arrive.
  • Parents’ balances are updated with the full attendance charge, once the attendances are submitted, and credited with the CCS subsidy on the date that is received.
  • The department allocates hours to a family on a fortnightly basis. If a parent uses more hours per fortnight than they have allocated they will use up more hours in the first week and have fewer remaining in the second week, so their CCS rebate will go up and down from week to week depending where they are in the fortnightly cycle.

Online applications

  • Centres are required to provide parents with a confirmation of what they have signed up to from a fees perspective, referred to as a ‘Complying Written Agreement’, which may be provided digitally.
  • The SmartCentral online application process will email the parent a link to download their CWA and confirm their enrolment once a staff member has approved the application. For centres using integrated direct debit the parent will be prompted to confirm their payment method at that time.

View the prototype notice here

Excerpt from Department’s Fact Sheet on CWAs

CWA requirements

See the full Fact Sheet here.

Statements

A new statement type has been created to replace the previous 3 types. It combines the functions and works for all service type and for historical CCMS records.

In view of the fact that Subsidy payments may come in at any time (if at all) those payments are treated like any other payment (eg parent payments) and show on the parent’s statement as a separate credit line item.

Attendance charges (full amount) for all enrolment types will be applied to the parent’s account as soon as the attendances are submitted.

The page orientation is portrait mode to minimise page counts for the new layout.

Bookings

  • Changes to bookings constitute a variation of the original agreement and must therefore be submitted to the department. Submit the booking change by doing an enrolment update after the booking change.
  • Parents will be advised through myGov if a change to their booking has been made and the fees associated with the updated booking.

Sign In / Sign Out

  • Reporting of Sign In / Sign Out times became mandatory on 14th January 2019.
  • We strongly recommend all centres use our pin based digital attendance solution.

Software Activation

  • To enable query and update to CCS you must have an active PRODA key registered.

  • Unfortunately all activations expire within 6 months and a new activation code must be generated each time.