Come on Centrelink can't you get anything right

[newstart2380]

Story of young man with MS on a Current Affair, can not get a disability pension.

[polksaladallie]

Could hardly believe this.  He was asked if anyone came to his home to assess him.  That doesn't happen.  I wonder if he went to a centrelink office?  If he did, how could they not see that he is disabled?

I know of and have heard of people who pretend they have chronic fatigue syndrome and have been given the DSP.  I don't know if this still happens.  It happened a lot when the liberal party was in power and was encouraged because it was a way of keeping the unemployment figures down.

[freakiness]

What a strange story.

Imagine a centrelink call centre person thinking they know better than the doctor.

The forms the doctor has to fill out are not lacking in detail.

[katydidthat]

The Centrelink forms applicants fill out, and those the doctors fill out, are entered into a computer program which calculates how "disabled" a person is ... nothing to do with logic ... let alone sympathy, feeling, understanding, or comprehension.  What you have to do is work out what questions were answered "wrongly" and adjust them.  Then keep on applying.  Sad, but that's the way it is.  

[aspie*mum]

A family friend of ours has a severely disabled daughter - she is now 23, non verbal, not toilet trained, can't dress herself.  She can walk, feed herself a little bit but needs to be supervised heavily.  She is in no way independent.  She was born like this.

Every 6 months her mother has to get an updated form for her daughter to receive a disability pension - her mother once said to C'link - "Don't you think I want my daughter to get better?  Don't you think if that was possible I'd do anything?  This is so ridiculous".  This girl has no chance of any improvement and in fact her health is declining and yet still forms have to be lodged every so often that state she is not getting better.  

So awful for her parents to have to be reminded of that every so often - as if the day to day care wasn't enough.

[bella_again]

Its hard for families.  I know a gentleman with MS is very similar to this gentleman, he still does work but its getting harder for him.  I think you'll find that centrelink will come around.  I wonder whether the forms were filled out correctly, there are a couple of questions that need to be answered a certain way and sometimes doctors don't use the right terminology or tick the wrong box and that's it its denied.

I agree Aspie mum your friend should not have to repeatedly put in forms as its clear after 23 years there is likely to be no improvement.  I think a lot of it is they want to see if anything at all has changed. I had the same with my two girls constant form filling in to see if their genetically inherited disability had disappeared despite it being constant over the years.

It's no biggie to fill in though, I just do what they ask and send away.

[topsidesoul]

The Centrelink forms applicants fill out, and those the doctors fill out, are entered into a computer program which calculates how "disabled" a person is ... nothing to do with logic ... let alone sympathy, feeling, understanding, or comprehension.  What you have to do is work out what questions were answered "wrongly" and adjust them.  Then keep on applying.  Sad, but that's the way it is.  

Centerlink has contracted people whose job is to check oversights like this.

I am not sure of what their position is known as.

[bright.ton42]

I believe there is  a Centrelink ombudsman (if that's the correct title) who one can

appeal to and they will look very closely at the case. 

I also think the regular form filling though utterly ridiculous as in the 

above cases is the way they do it with everyone regardless 

Bureacracy  at it most stupid.  

[shepherdsrule]

The entire freaking system needs to be overhauled.

A friend of mine took her son to Centrelink to apply for the youth allowance. Thinking go to the source rather than phone calls they stood in line for 15 minutes. Upon reaching the counter they were told to go down the back and use the red phone, press 6 and they can apply that way. Off they trot, red phone tells them 'there is a one hour and forty five minutes' waiting time. So back to the line to ask for an appointment, no we don't do appointments you need to phone. So off home, sat on phone for 45 minutes (less than they had thought). Once answered son was asked 5 questions and told a form would be in the mail. Week later form arrives, fill it out, send it back.

Why could this form not have been simply handed out at the Centrelink office is beyond me.

[katydidthat]

The Centrelink appeals process is first you can go back to the original decision maker.  This is optional (and usually a waste of time).  Then it's an appeal to an Authorised Review Officer - a more senior officer who has had no part in the original decision.  Then, it's the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.  If that doesn't work the next step is the the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.  

http://www.wrcqld.org.au/dealing-with-centrelink/disagree-with-centrelink.html