Recognised participation

From 5 January 2026, the CCS activity test was replaced. Before this date, these were known as recognised activities.

• Recognised participation can include any of the following:
• paid work, including being self employed
• paid or unpaid leave, including paid or unpaid parental or maternity leave
• unpaid work in a family business
• unpaid work experience or unpaid internship
• doing an approved course of education or study
• doing training to improve work skills or employment prospects
• actively looking for work
• other recognised participation on a case by case basis.

We’ll also recognise the following participation types only for a certain amount of time:

• periods of unpaid leave for up to 6 months, this doesn’t apply to unpaid parental leave
• setting up a business for up to 13 fortnights over a 12 month period if you’re setting up a business and then start working in the business, you need to update your recognised participation details from setting up a business to paid work.
• If your only activity is volunteering or actively looking for work you can only count the first 16 hours that you do.

For help, use our online guide to update your recognised participation details.

Parental or maternity leave

We’ll count any paid or unpaid parental and maternity leave you take. We’ll continue to count this as long as you’re expected to return to work after your leave ends. When including this as a recognised participation, you should give us the hours you worked before you started your leave.

Casual or irregular hours of work

If your work hours change each fortnight, you can give us an estimate. Estimates should be the highest number of hours you expect to work in a fortnight over the next 3 months.

If your Centrelink online account is linked to myGov, sign in now to update your estimate.

Sign in to myGov

You can also tell us using either:

• the Express Plus Centrelink mobile app
• Centrelink phone self service.

Find out more about what you can do using self service.

If you don’t have access to a self service option, please call the Centrelink families line.

Example of giving an estimate for irregular work hours

Suzie is a single parent working at a supermarket. Her work hours vary from 15 to 45 hours per fortnight. Suzie declares the highest number of hours she expects to work within a fortnight over a 3 month period. In Suzie’s case, this is 45 hours per fortnight.

This means Suzie can access 72 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight.

Travel time

You may be able to include travel time as part of your recognised participation for CCS.

You can include reasonable time taken to travel between your child care service and the location of your recognised participation type. This could include your place of work, training, study or other activity.

Example of including travel time in the hours of recognised participation type

Peter’s child, Josh, attends child care for 4 days each fortnight. Peter’s work is a 30 minute drive from his child care service. The time it takes him to get to work and back to the child care service is reasonable travel time. His child isn't in his care during this time, so Peter can add 4 hours to his recognised participation each fortnight.