Process for consideration of special circumstances for student allowances
Chris Miller made this Official Information request to Ministry of Social Development
The request was successful.
From: Chris Miller
Dear Ministry of Social Development,
I would like to see any documentation or guidelines you have on the process for considering "special circumstances" that would exempt a student from the 200 week limit on student allowances in the new policy starting in 2013. This should include, if possible, who is responsible for making such decisions, eg whether there is a set person or persons, and how much weight is given to medical documentation when the reason for application is due to disability that qualifies a student for limited full-time status and thus increases the length of time a qualification takes to obtain.
Yours faithfully,
Chris Miller
From: OIA_Requests (MSD)
Ministry of Social Development
Dear Chris Miller,
Thank you for your email received 14 June 2012, under the Official Information Act 1982. Your request has been forwarded to the appropriate officials at National office to respond. You may expect a response to be sent to you as soon as possible.
Regards
Official and Parliamentary Information team | Ministerial and Executive Services
Ministry of Social Development
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From: Tanya Howlett
Ministry of Social Development
Dear Chris
Please find attached the Ministry's response to your Official Information
Act request concerning consideration of special circumstances for
exemptions from the 200 week limit on student allowances.
Kind regards
Tanya Howlett
Tanya Howlett
Manager, Official and Parliamentary Information
Ministry of Social Development
Ph: 916 3638 Internal extn: 42638
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Brendon Steen left an annotation ()
Was just reading the response to you "Numbers of students qualifying for limited full-time status due to disability" request and noticed this as well.
It seems the power to grant an exemption that they're referring to is the one in reg 20(7) of the Student Allowance Regulations 1998, which seems to give the power to the chief executive of MSD.
Will be interesting to see if they come back with any guidelines, etc for how those decisions are made. Could also be interesting to follow-up with a question about how many exemptions have been made using that power.
The regulations are here: http://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/pu...
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