Understanding your Financial Assistance Scheme application outcome

There are two application outcomes:

• Eligible application – The Financial Assistance Scheme will provide financial assistance.
• Ineligible application – The Financial Assistance Scheme will not provide financial assistance.

Before your final application outcome is decided, you may receive:

• notice that your application is unlikely to be eligible
  If your application is unlikely to be eligible, you will receive a notice asking you to address any issues identified or provide further details within the next 28 days.
• a notice of request for further information
  This notification explains why there is insufficient information to make a decision about your application and requests further information. It gives you 28 days (which you can ask to be extended) to provide further information.

Decision-making process

To make sure decisions on payments are fair and consistent, Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) staff are highly trained and use policies, checklists, guidelines and legislation to decide:

• when an application is complete (all the information required is in the application)
• eligibility as either a primary, secondary, or related victim or eligibility for funeral expenses
• eligibility for different financial assistance types
• whether any decision made for interim assistance can be maintained following assessment of the FAS application and eligibility.

Notice of decision

The FAS will also provide a written notice of decision once it considers an application.

The notice of decision will outline:

• the outcome of the decision (whether you are eligible for financial assistance)
• the reasons for the decision
• the amount the FAS will pay to you or a service provider (if a payment of assistance is being made)
• any conditions attached to the payment of assistance (if a payment of assistance is being made), and
• your right to an internal review.

How long will the decision-making process take?

The FAS will work as quickly as possible to process applications and make decisions on payments. However, the FAS anticipates that in the first months after it opens it will receive a high number of applications and delays are expected.

The FAS will publish the average time to process an application once this information is available.