Older West Australians are caught in a “perfect storm” on aged care as sky-high construction prices and a tradie shortage make it too expensive to build new residential facilities and lagging home care funding leaves them stuck in hospital beds.

The number of residential aged care beds in WA per 1000 older people has steadily dropped over the past five years.

At the same time, the WA Government has been arguing to the Commonwealth its share of home care funding lags behind its share of the nation’s older population — a fight Roger Cook took to Canberra in August.

“We’re in the eye of a perfect storm,” says Russell Bricknell, chief executive of WA’s largest non-profit provider Juniper.

“What you’re not doing is sustaining people in homes as long as they possibly can, and we haven’t got

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