The Department of Human Services will be contacting Child Care Subsidy customers who wrongly received lump sum payments recently.
General Manager Hank Jongen apologised to people affected, which involves less than one per cent of Child Care Subsidy recipients.
“It’s regrettable a recent system upgrade impacted the family income assessment process,” Mr Jongen said.
“I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this has caused families.
“Some family records were assessed without recognising both partners’ incomes and the system thought they had been underpaid. This resulted in automatic top up payments to people’s bank accounts.
“We resolved the issue within two days.
“However we are now carefully reviewing around 8000 payments made during the two-day period. Many of these payments were valid so we need to separate those that shouldn’t have been made.
“We will be calling people affected to explain what has happened and offer repayment options.
“Most of the overpayments are between $50 and $2000.
“We will be flexible with our approach and can tailor arrangements to take account of people’s financial situation.
“This doesn’t apply to the overwhelming majority of the 1.1 million people receiving Child Care Subsidy. We estimate a fraction of 1 per cent of Child Care Subsidy families are affected.”
If families have any concerns about payments they have received, they can call 136 150.