About Income Support Payments

This information was written by Inclusion Australia.

Where it says ‘we’ it means Inclusion Australia.

This information is written in Easy Read.

Hard words are in bold.

We explain what they mean.

It is a good idea to read this information with support.

Inclusion Australia has been looking at information about people with an intellectual disability on income support payments.

Income support payments are money from Centrelink to help people who:

• Are looking for work

• Cannot work much because of their disability

• Cannot work at all because of their disability.

There are more than 140,000 people with disability who get income support in Australia.

This includes:

• About 125,000 on the Disability Support Pension or DSP

• About 14,500 on Jobseeker Payment

• About 4000 on Youth Allowance.

There are more people with an intellectual disability on Jobseeker Payment and Youth Allowance than before.

We think this may be because it is becoming harder for people with disability to get the DSP.

Many people with disability must do a Program of Support for 18 months before they can get the DSP.

Programs of Support can include things like:

• Applying for jobs

• Doing work experience or training

• Going to employment services meetings

Employment services are programs run by the Government that try to help people to find and keep a job.

More than 3200 people with disability must do compulsory activities with employment services to keep getting their income support payment.

Compulsory activities can mean things like:

• Applying for jobs

• Doing community work

• Going to employment services meetings.

People with an intellectual disability may find it hard to do compulsory activities.

For example if they:

• Cannot understand what they need to do to keep getting their payment

• Find it hard to look for work or go to appointments without support.

If someone does not do their compulsory activities they may get a penalty.

This means Centrelink may:

• Stop the person’s payments for a short time

• Pay them less money

• Cancel their payments completely.

This can make it hard for the person to pay for everyday things like:

• Rent

• Food

• Medications.

We have written a big report about this information.

The big report is not in Easy Read.

You can find the big report here.

You can read more on what we think about the DSP here.

You can read more on what we think about employment services here.