Help Centre

Establishing initial liability, which is DVA accepting that your injury, disease or condition was caused or contributed to by your service. No compensation is paid until that is settled, and everything else builds on that decision.

No. New claims are lodged under the MRCA, which carries no time limit on lodging for most conditions, and claims are regularly accepted decades after discharge. What matters is the evidence linking your condition to your service, and older claims often benefit most from a thorough review of your service medical records.

It depends on how complex the claim is. Initial liability claims lodged complete have been averaging around four to five months as at September 2026, and permanent impairment claims longer again. Every extra condition adds time, because DVA decides each one separately. No advocate can make DVA assess a claim faster, so be wary of anyone who promises speed. A claim lodged deliberately with evidence still to follow is a different thing from a claim that is simply missing pieces.

A rejection usually does not mean the condition is not service related. More often the evidence was not structured the way DVA needed to see it. We can read the decision, work out what was missing, and prepare a claim that addresses it.

Yes. You do not need combat service or an overseas deployment. Training injuries, accidents on base and things that happened during routine duties are all potentially claimable. The link to service is what matters, not where you were.

A diagnosis is needed before DVA can accept a condition, but not having one yet is a smaller obstacle than most people expect. If your service records show the injury or the symptoms, the missing piece is usually just a current assessment. COMPASS can help you get there, including pointing you towards clinicians who understand what DVA needs to see.

Incapacity payments replace lost income where a service related condition stops you working or cuts your hours. Permanent impairment is for the physical or mental impact itself. Under the MRCA it is paid as a periodic payment, with the option to convert some or all of it to a lump sum. That election is final, so it is worth understanding before you make it.

Often yes. 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, without a diagnosis or an accepted claim. For physical conditions, Provisional Access to Medical Treatment covers the most commonly accepted conditions before liability is determined.

There is an interim payment called the Veteran Payment, available while DVA assesses a mental health claim, subject to work hours, age, residency and income and asset tests. You apply through MyService at the same time as lodging your liability claim.

It depends on where you are. If you are on a planned medical transition, lodging earlier matters, because DVA prioritises transitioning members and you can request that your separation be held until liability is determined. We will talk through what makes sense for your situation.

From 1 July 2027 the 12 session treatment cycle goes, so you will not need a new GP referral every twelve sessions. Provider fees increase, which should mean more providers willing to take Veteran Card holders. And a $5,000 annual review threshold is introduced for allied health services.

DVA says it is a checkpoint rather than a cap, and that clinically necessary treatment above it will continue to be funded where there is demonstrated clinical need. You can keep receiving treatment while a request for more is being considered, provided the request goes in before you reach the threshold. What the review process actually looks like has not been settled yet.

Not if you receive the Special Rate Disability Pension or the TPI Pension, or have been determined catastrophically injured. Open Arms counselling, dental, optical, hearing, GP and specialist services do not count towards it either.

Yes. DVA has consultation open until 30 October 2026, and serving and ex-serving members, families and providers can all make a submission. The allied health consultation is at consultations.dva.gov.au/allied-health-consultations, and the wider DVA consultation hub is at consultations.dva.gov.au.

A tax free lump sum under section 80 of the MRCA, paid once for each eligible child where you are assessed at 80 or more impairment points. It sits on top of your permanent impairment compensation rather than coming out of it. A child under 16 qualifies on age alone. From 16 to under 25 they need to be in full time education and not in full time work on their own account.

For claims lodged on or after 1 July 2026, yes, where care is genuinely shared. A written care arrangement in place at the relevant date is used to apportion it. Where there is nothing in writing, half goes to the veteran and the other half is shared among the other carers, regardless of the actual care split. Claims lodged before that date are not affected. Where the veteran is the sole carer, the whole amount goes to them. And the payment is made once per child, so where it was already paid on an earlier claim that entitlement is extinguished and nobody can come back for a share of it later.

Possibly. You still need 80 or more impairment points, plus either liability accepted under the MRCA for a new condition claimed after 1 July 2026, or your impairment worsened by at least five points from your baseline. It does not surface automatically, so it is worth having the file looked at.

Your medical records, specialist reports and the legislative factors that have to be met, pulled together into one organised submission, in the order DVA needs to see it. It is the difference between making the decision-maker do the matching and handing them a finished argument.

Charlotte reviews them herself. A five year service history can run to hundreds of pages, and mapping every condition to the right evidence and Statement of Principles factors takes hours. Purpose-built, AI-assisted tools help her work through that volume consistently. The clinical judgement stays with her.

No. The tools we use run on a local server under our control. Once health data goes into a public AI service you lose track of where it sits, who has seen it and whether it has been retained for training. Your records are never sent to any third party AI service.

Your records sit on Australian servers under Australian privacy law. We share them with your treating doctors and DVA when your claim needs it. Anyone else requires your written consent first.

A legal instrument setting out the factors that have to be met for DVA to accept a particular condition as service related. There are hundreds of them. The job is to match what is in your medical records to the specific factors in the relevant Statement, so each one can be ticked off.

It comes down to when you lodge. From 1 July 2026 the VEA and DRCA closed to new compensation and rehabilitation claims, so every new claim is determined under the MRCA, no matter when you served. Claims lodged before that date continue under the Act they were lodged under, even if the decision comes months later. The VETS Act is the amending Act that made those changes. It is not a separate scheme your claim sits under.

The VEA and DRCA closed to new claims and the MRCA was improved to become the single ongoing scheme. Several entitlements that were closed under the older Acts opened up, and a few of them will not be offered to you automatically.

No. Nothing you already receive needs an application, a form or a phone call to keep. Entitlements established under the VEA or DRCA before 1 July 2026 continue as they were and keep being indexed, and decisions already made are not reassessed. Income support was left alone entirely: Service Pension, Partner Service Pension, Income Support Supplement and the Veteran Payment all continue under the VEA, as does qualifying service and the Gold Card that flows from it. The action, where there is any, is on the other side. Some of what opened up on 1 July only opens when you lodge something.

Not the way it used to. Conditions arising from tobacco use before 1 January 1998 can now be accepted as service related, provided the smoking started or increased because of service. Smoking that started or increased on or after that date is still excluded. For a lot of older members that single date decides the claim.

For the first time, yes, if a service related condition is preventing you from working. Your existing Disability Compensation Payment continues alongside it. There is no automatic assessment, so nobody will offer this to you.

A payment for members of age pension age with high impairment, doing the job the Extreme Disablement Adjustment did under the VEA. It needs at least 70 impairment points and a lifestyle rating of 6 or more. There is no claim form, and eligibility can be considered at your request, which is the point. If you are over age pension age and near 70 points, ask.

Yes, and this is the easiest of them. Recipients of the Special Rate, Temporary Special Rate or Intermediate Rate can now claim MRCA incapacity payments, and for those three rates DVA does not require fresh medical evidence of incapacity. The evidence that established your work capacity under the VEA carries across.

If your conditions were accepted under the VEA, yes, and they were never available to you before. DRCA members receiving these services keep them without disruption and can ask about moving to the higher MRCA weekly rate. Watch the interaction with Veterans Home Care, because approval for household services under the MRCA stops domestic assistance through VHC.

Possibly. People previously covered only by the VEA or DRCA can now be considered, but the criteria still have to be met, which means receiving MRCA incapacity payments and being assessed at 50 or more impairment points. In practice that means an incapacity claim and a permanent impairment claim both have to be finalised first.

Not necessarily. An injury or death that happened while you were on duty can now be accepted on that basis, whether or not it resulted from performing those duties, and without running the claim through a Statement of Principles at all. The usual exclusions still apply, including serious default, wilful act and serious breach of discipline.

Whichever helps you. Where the Repatriation Medical Authority amends a Statement of Principles between the primary decision and the review, the delegate can apply either version and must apply the one more beneficial to you. It is worth raising expressly if you are mid review and a relevant instrument has been reissued.