Guides, resources, and answers to help you find your way.

An advocate represents you through the DVA claims process. That means working out which claims to lodge, gathering your medical and service evidence, preparing everything to DVA’s requirements, dealing with DVA on your behalf, and explaining how the law applies to your situation.

Advocates are accredited through the Advocacy Training and Development Program (ATDP). Initial claims are usually handled by a Level 2 advocate. Formal appeals to the Veterans’ Review Board or the Administrative Review Tribunal generally involve a Level 3 advocate or a solicitor.

No. COMPASS is based in Brisbane but works with veterans right across Australia. The whole process runs remotely through phone, video, email, and our secure client portal. Your medical records and DVA correspondence all move electronically, so where you live makes no difference to the quality of support you receive.

An accredited advocate is trained specifically in veterans’ compensation law through the ATDP, the national training program overseen by DVA. Advocates handle claims and entitlements under the VEA, DRCA, and MRCA day in and day out.

Lawyers are generally only needed for formal appeals at the Administrative Review Tribunal or for matters outside the compensation system. For lodging and managing DVA claims, an accredited advocate is the standard pathway, and usually the more economical one.

Yes, completely. COMPASS is a privately owned Australian practice. We don’t work for DVA, we’re not funded by DVA, and we have no obligation to anyone but you. Our accreditation through the ATDP means we meet the national standard for advocates, but our only job is representing your interests.

Charlotte’s background is in healthcare, not the military. She spent years in nursing and medicolegal work before moving into veteran advocacy. She started COMPASS to bring the same careful, evidence-based approach she used in healthcare to the DVA claims process, and to keep you at the centre of your own case.

We charge a flat fee with a percentage cap to keep things fair. If a set percentage of your compensation works out lower than the flat fee, you pay the lower amount, so your fee stays in proportion to your outcome. It’s all agreed in writing in a cost agreement before any work starts. Book a no-obligation chat.

We offer two ways to pay. The standard option invoices you as the work progresses, on agreed terms. The deferred option holds your fee over until your claim is finalised, and you only pay if it succeeds. Whichever you choose is set out in the cost agreement you sign before any work begins.

Charlotte reviews your records herself. A five-year service history can run to many hundreds of pages, and working through it properly, mapping every condition to the right evidence and Statement of Principles factors, can take four to five hours, depending on how complex the medical history is. The purpose-built, AI-assisted tools she uses help her get through that volume thoroughly and consistently, so nothing important slips through. They were built for exactly this work and grounded in authoritative sources, the Statements of Principles and recognised medical references, so the analysis stays anchored to the real factors rather than guesswork. The clinical judgement, what counts and how it fits together, stays with her.

What we don’t do is put your medical records through public AI services like ChatGPT or Claude. Once health data goes into a service like that, you lose track of where it sits, who has seen it, and whether it has been kept to train future models. Veteran records have no business in that pipeline. The tools we use run on a local server under our control, and your records are never sent out to any AI service or third party to be processed or retained.

Establishing initial liability. This is DVA accepting that your injury, disease, or condition was caused or contributed to by your service. No compensation gets paid until that’s settled. Everything else in your claim builds on top of that decision.

No. There is no time limit on lodging a claim for most conditions under the VEA, DRCA, or MRCA. Veterans regularly have claims accepted decades after discharge.

What matters is the evidence linking your condition to your service, and older claims often benefit most from a thorough clinical review of your service medical records.

Just yourself. The eligibility check is a free 30-minute conversation about your situation, covering when you served, what conditions you’re dealing with, and what you’ve already lodged with DVA, if anything.

You don’t need documents prepared. If we proceed, we’ll guide you through gathering everything needed, step by step.

It depends on which scheme you’re under and how complex the claim is. New MRCA initial liability claims lodged complete are currently averaging around four to five months. Permanent impairment claims run longer, around seven to eight months under MRCA. DRCA and VEA claims usually take longer again, often more than a year. Every extra condition adds time too, since DVA decides each one separately, and claims now carry around four conditions on average.

The biggest thing in your control is lodging a complete claim from day one: a diagnosis for every condition, your supporting evidence, and the service link mapped to the relevant SoP factors, all in the first submission. Complete claims keep moving; incomplete ones get put on hold while DVA writes back for what’s missing. No advocate, paid or free, can make DVA assess your claim any faster, so be wary of anyone who promises speed. What makes the difference is getting the claim right before it goes in.

A rejection usually doesn’t mean the condition isn’t service-related. It often means the evidence wasn’t structured the way DVA needed to see it. We can look at the decision letter, work out what DVA wanted that they didn’t get, and prepare a new claim that addresses it. We don’t run formal appeals ourselves. If that’s the right move for your case, we’ll refer you to a Level 3 advocate or a lawyer.

Yes. You don’t need combat service or an overseas deployment to claim. Training injuries, accidents on base, things that happened during routine duties or postings: if it happened while you were serving, it’s potentially claimable. The link to service is what matters, not where you were when it happened.

Your medical records, specialist reports, and the legislative factors that have to be met, all pulled together into one organised submission. The point is to put everything in front of DVA in the order they need to see it, so the link between your service and your condition is clear on first read. It’s the difference between making the decision-maker do the matching themselves and handing them a finished argument.

Your records sit on Australian servers, under Australian privacy law. The tools we use to process them run locally rather than through cloud services owned overseas. We share records with your treating doctors and DVA when your claim needs it. Anyone else, you’d need to give written consent first.

Our review tools are clinically trained and run on Australian servers under our control. Medical records don’t get uploaded to ChatGPT, Claude, or any third-party cloud AI. Once health data goes into a public AI service you stop being able to track where it sits, who’s used it, or whether it’s been retained for training. Veteran records shouldn’t be in that pipeline. So we built ours separately.

Incapacity Payments are for lost income. If a service-related condition stops you working or cuts your hours, they top up the difference. Permanent Impairment is for the physical or mental impact itself: pain, restricted function, the way the condition affects your life. PI is paid either as a tax-free lump sum or fortnightly, depending on the scheme and the points.

You don’t have to wait. For mental health conditions, anyone with at least one day of continuous full-time service can access fully-funded treatment through Non-Liability Health Care. The condition doesn’t have to be service-linked for this one. For physical conditions, the Provisional Access to Medical Treatment program covers the 20 most commonly accepted conditions before liability is determined, so treatment can start while DVA is still deciding.

There’s an interim payment called the Veteran Payment, available while DVA is assessing a mental health claim. To qualify, you’d need to be working 8 hours a week or less, below Age Pension age, living in Australia, and within income and asset test limits. Partners may be eligible separately. The payment runs until 42 days after DVA decides your claim. If they decline, DVA will help move you across to a Services Australia payment so income doesn’t stop. You apply through MyService at the same time as lodging your liability claim. If you’ve already lodged, contact DVA directly. We can walk you through eligibility and the application if it’s not clear.

First step is asking DVA to reconsider. If they hold the decision and you still don’t agree, the next step is the Veterans’ Review Board. If we lodged the original claim, we can take you through the VRB process. For claims we didn’t prepare, or anything heading to the ART, you’d need a Level 3 advocate or a lawyer. We’ll point you to someone we trust.

It depends. DVA and Defence run separate processes, but some conditions and the way they’re documented in your service medical records can be visible to Defence. So the answer for someone in their final months versus someone with years left to serve looks different. We’ll talk through where you are and what makes sense. If you’re on a planned medical transition, lodging earlier matters: DVA prioritises transitioning members, you may be eligible for automatic incapacity payments for up to 12 weeks after discharge under MRCA, and you can request to have your separation held in abeyance until DVA has determined liability so income doesn’t drop off mid-claim. The earlier the evidence is ready, the smoother the move out.

It comes down to when and where you served. There are three Acts in play right now: VEA, DRCA, and MRCA. From 1 July 2026 those get replaced by a single new Act. Claims lodged before that date stay under the original Act, and existing entitlements are preserved. We’ll work out which scheme covers you and whether the timing of your claim should change.

On 1 July 2026, the three current Acts (VEA, DRCA, MRCA) collapse into a single new Act. The intent is one set of rules instead of three overlapping ones. The new Act also opens up rehabilitation, payment, and healthcare options that some veterans couldn’t access under whichever Act they originally fell under. We’ve been preparing for this since the legislation passed, so claims being lodged now are built with the transition in mind.

No. The government has committed to protecting existing benefits. If you’re already on a pension or hold a Veteran Card, nothing about your entitlement changes. Your current support is secure.

A Statement of Principles is a legal document setting out the factors that have to be met for DVA to accept a particular condition as service-related. There are hundreds of them, one for almost every recognised condition. Our job is to match what’s in your medical records to the specific factors in the relevant SoP, so DVA can tick each one off.