Regular engagement and support process
Clients must be contacted at least four times by Work and Income before initiating a failure to meet a social obligation. You must complete the three Contact Steps of regular engagement and support and then make a final appointment. You can only determine that the client has failed to meet their social obligations at the final appointment.
The Contact Steps can be over the phone or face to face.
The aim of this process is to support clients to meet their social obligations or for clients to take all reasonable steps to meet their social obligations.
At the first Contact Step of engagement and support you should discuss with the client and their partner (if any) whether they are meeting their social obligations and, if not, encourage them to do so.
The next two Contact Steps of engagement and support should be focused on encouraging and supporting the client to meet their social obligations, and following up what happened at the previous Contact Steps.
At each of the three Contact Steps you must:
- check that the client is taking all reasonable steps to meet their social obligations, and actively help and encourage the client to meet those obligations
- ensure that the client is connected with local community information
- advise the client of the next stage of engagement and support and contact
- remind the client of their social obligations and consequences of not meeting these
For more information on the three stage process of engagement see:
- Contact steps - social obligations [no link find out why]
Also see:
