Child Disability Payment decision making guide

General approach when carrying out award reviews

Confirmation from a professional used to be called the one piece of supporting information from a professional. Its role is to broadly confirm the individual’s conditions, disability, or needs.

Most award reviews will not require new confirmation from a professional. Case managers must only request confirmation from a professional as part of a review if both of the following apply:

  • The change relates to a condition for which the individual has not previously provided confirmation from a professional or for which good cause has been established. This can be because the condition is new or because the individual’s confirmation from a professional related to a different condition they have.
  • The reported change in their condition is likely to lead to a change in their level of entitlement.

In all other scenarios the case manager must accept the previously provided confirmation from a professional, or the fact that good cause has been established for the absence of confirmation from a professional, as sufficient.

See chapter on specific review scenarios for more details.

See the chapter on gathering supporting information for more detail on our policy regarding confirmation from a professional and supporting information.

Needing more detail to establish the new level of need

When carrying out a review and a change is reported, case managers might need more detail to establish the individual’s new level of entitlement. They should choose either of the options below:

  • Contact the individual to ask follow-up questions. Here, case managers must ensure that this phone call does not become, or feel to the individual like, a de-facto consultation. For more details, see operational guidance on contacting individuals with follow-up questions.
  • Choose the decision-making tool that is most appropriate and most likely to provide the information they need.

There are a number of decision-making tools for case managers to use:

  • consulting guidance, such as the Decision-Making Guidance, Operational Guidance, Medical Guidance
  • case discussion
  • requesting supporting information.

For more detail on choosing the correct decision-making tool consult the Principles of Decision-Making chapter.

When establishing the individual’s level of need, supporting information:

  • is just one of several decision-making tools
  • should not be the default step to take.

Rather, the case manager should choose the action based on what’s most appropriate in the review at hand. As part of that consideration, they should consider what’s best for the individual. For example, a quick phone call to the individual to ask a follow-up question might be better than the individual having to:

  • collect supporting information from their wider support network
  • wait a number of weeks until the case manager’s request for supporting information has been answered by the contact the individual has provided.

If the case manager decides that gathering supporting information is the most appropriate decision-making tool, they need to decide which source would be best-placed to provide the information they need. This can be a professional or a member of the individual’s wider support network. Crucially, requesting supporting information should be done with the goal to more fully understand the individual’s new level of needs. The aim here is not to “verify” what the individual has told us.

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