June update #DHSTV transcript
This month important information for Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY recipients, refugee week and leading the way in blood donations.
G’day I’m Hank Jongen, here to tell you what’s happening with the department in June.
From next month we’re changing the way we work out your Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY payments. All dependent children in your family, under 22 years old will now be counted in your family pool as part of the parental income test.
If you got a letter about this recently make sure you give it to your parents so they can update your family pool information with us, so you receive the correct rate of payment.
If you didn’t receive a letter from us, it means we already have your family pool information and if you don’t have any dependent brothers or sisters or you’re receiving these payments as an independent student then you don’t need to do anything.
You can find more information about this on our website.
We celebrate refugee week in June, and our department has a range of services available to refugees and humanitarian entrants. We offer translated publications, interpreters, and a translation service. It’s all provided free and helps people with their transition into Australia.
You can also visit our ‘Information in your Language’ pages on the website to find translated information you can read, watch or listen for important information about the payments and services we provide.
And we have a series of ‘New To Australia’ videos available in a variety of languages right here on our YouTube channel.
World Blood Donor day is another very important day this month and I am very proud to say that our department is one of the leaders in corporate blood donations in Australia. In 2015 we made 2,517 donations of Blood, Plasma and Platelets through the Australian Red Cross Blood Service Red 25 initiative which helped save the lives of 7,551 people.
I’m extremely proud of our blood donors, our Red Cross coordination team and in 2016 we’re looking to improve on these numbers
You can find out more about this and other happenings on my Facebook and Twitter accounts so make sure you follow me and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up to date.
Next month we’ll be balancing your Family payments. To streamline this process make sure you’re registered for a Centrelink online account so we can prefill your information for your tax and save you some time.
I’ll see you then, Bye for now.