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STA Perth
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- The support, as the guideline frames it
- What the WA figure actually means
- The four conditions
- The five exclusions
- Twenty-eight days, spent deliberately
- What the 2026–27 schedule changed
- Inclusions and exclusions
- Rights and oversight during a WA short stay
- Requesting STA funding
- Choosing an STA provider in Perth
- Where we support STA across Perth and Western Australia
Short Term Accommodation · Perth
NDIS Short Term Accommodation in Perth, in the state with the country’s widest respite gap
Of the jurisdictions the Bureau of Statistics could publish separately, Western Australia records the widest respite gap in the country. In 2022, 80 per cent of WA primary carers reported no unmet need for respite care, against 88 per cent in Queensland and 86 per cent nationally — meaning one in five WA primary carers said they needed a break they were not getting. That is not a presentational problem. It is a description of several thousand households. This page sets out how short term accommodation actually works: the eligibility test underneath every request, the five situations where it is not funded at all, the pricing structure that changed on 1 July 2026, and the one qualifying factor that works in a Western Australian applicant’s favour.
WA school holidays and the weeks around Christmas are the tightest periods, and regional availability is thinner again. Approximate dates are enough to start.
STA in Perth and WA at a glance
The support, as the guideline frames it
The operational guideline opens by saying that short term accommodation allows you to have mutually rewarding time apart from your primary informal supports. Read that twice, because it is not a description of a building.
Your primary informal supports are the family and friends who provide the majority of your unpaid, active, disability-related support. The whole eligibility test is built around them, and the accommodation is only the mechanism by which the time apart happens. That is why STA can be delivered in your own home, or in a homestay with a host who is not one of your informal supports — in those arrangements the supports are funded and the accommodation is not.
Mutually is doing work as well. A stay justified only by a carer’s exhaustion, or only by a participant’s wish for independence, can each be queried. The support lives in the overlap between the two.
What the WA figure actually means
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports the share of primary carers with no unmet need for respite care, from the Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers. In 2022 Western Australia recorded 80 per cent — the lowest of the jurisdictions with publishable sample sizes, against 88 per cent in Queensland and 86 per cent nationally. Nationally the figure has not moved in a decade: 87 per cent in 2012, 86 per cent at the 2018 baseline, 86 per cent in 2022.
A few things follow.
The headline is that one in five Western Australian primary carers reported a respite need that was not being met. Against a national primary carer population of 1.2 million — up sharply from 861,600 in 2018 — that is a large absolute number of households in a state with a small and widely distributed population.
Distance is the obvious driver, and the data gives it some support: nationally, 89 per cent of carers in inner regional areas reported no unmet need against 85 per cent in major cities, which cuts against the assumption that remoteness alone explains everything. What is more likely in WA is thin provider coverage across very long distances, so that the question is not whether a service exists but whether it exists within reach in the week you need it.
There is also a gendered pattern worth noting. Nationally, 90 per cent of male primary carers reported no unmet need against 84 per cent of female primary carers, while the survey found 6.1 per cent of women were primary carers against 3.0 per cent of men. The group carrying most of this work reports more of the shortfall.
The four conditions
All four have to be met, and they are rarely set out anywhere a family would find them.
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Put the six hours on paper rather than asserting it. A week’s log covering early personal care, mealtimes, transfers, supervision, medication and overnight repositioning reaches the threshold far more often than families assume, and a dated record carries weight that a description of the general burden does not.
The other commonly decisive factor is carer wellbeing at risk. Families are most reluctant to put this in writing because it feels like conceding failure. It is not. A GP letter about the carer’s own health, a record of months of disrupted sleep, or a note from a treating team all carry weight — and nationally, 43.8 per cent of primary carers report a disability of their own, so it is also entirely ordinary.
The five exclusions
Five situations put STA out of reach, and the guideline frames each as an exclusion rather than a consideration.
- Living alone and independently with no drop-in supports — there is no caring arrangement to take a break from.
- Receiving more than 18 hours of paid support at home each day — at that level the scheme treats your support as already funded.
- Not actually being apart from the informal supports you live with, or who provide substantial daily drop-in.
- Living in supported independent living, or holding ILO funding. The exclusion that catches the most people.
- Waiting for home modifications, which the guideline routes to medium term accommodation.
The last of those is a real boundary rather than a formality. If building work is the reason you need accommodation, MTA is the correct request, judged on different criteria and priced differently.
Twenty-eight days, spent deliberately
The guideline generally funds up to 28 days a year, for up to 14 days at a time.
There is more latitude for children. Beyond 28 days is possible in exceptional cases, though 60 days a year is the practical ceiling, and extra criteria apply around residence, primary carer status and care needs beyond the usual for the child’s age.
Twenty-eight days across a year is a long weekend every six weeks, or two single weeks plus a fortnight. The families who get the most from it decide the shape in advance, partly because availability in Perth tightens hard in the obvious weeks and regional availability is thinner still, and partly because an unplanned stay is almost always a worse experience for the person going.
What the 2026–27 schedule changed
Almost nothing published online reflects this yet, and it changes what a stay looks like on an invoice.
Before 1 July 2026 an STA stay attracted one bundled daily figure covering accommodation and support, capped nationally at $2,178.57 a day for one-to-one weekday support. That bundling has been removed.
The 2026–27 schedule itemises each stay as follows:
| Component | Claimed as | 2026-27 national limit |
|---|---|---|
| Support, weekday daytime | Per hour | $73.58 |
| Support, weekday evening | Per hour | $81.07 |
| Support, weekday night | Per hour | $82.57 |
| Support, Saturday | Per hour | $103.54 |
| Support, Sunday | Per hour | $133.50 |
| Support, public holiday | Per hour | $163.46 |
| Sleepover | Each | $311.79 |
| Participant accommodation | Per day | $162.85 |
| Support worker accommodation | Per day | $162.85 |
High intensity support attracts higher hourly limits, from $79.60 on a weekday daytime to $176.84 on a public holiday. Remote and very remote loadings apply to these items as they do elsewhere in the schedule, which matters across much of this state.
Two practical consequences. Overnight is now claimed differently depending on whether a worker sleeps on site or stays awake and working, so “will somebody be awake overnight?” is a funding question as well as a safety one — ask it plainly. And the support worker accommodation item is more relevant in WA than in most places: where no local support worker is available, the guideline contemplates funding a worker’s accommodation, which is exactly the regional scenario.
Providers must also discuss changes to existing service agreements with you, and you have to agree before the new rates are claimed.
Inclusions and exclusions
Funded: standard accommodation of the usual kinds — hotel, motel, short stay rental, cabin, cottage, hostel, or a purpose-built respite house. The everyday assistance your informal carers would usually be providing. A support worker’s accommodation where overnight presence is required or no local worker exists. STA support in your own home or in a homestay with a host outside your informal network, with the support funded and not the lodging.
Not funded: holidays, specified as cruises, tours, holiday accommodation and airfares. Accommodation or programs for your carers. Everyday living costs including rent, mortgage and utilities. Meals and activities. Transport, in cases where you can travel or use public transport unaided.
Rights and oversight during a WA short stay
An STA stay is frequently not a residential tenancy. Where you are in a hotel, motel, cabin or purpose-built respite house for a fortnight, the Residential Tenancies Act 1987 protections that attach to a standard Western Australian rental generally will not apply, because short-stay and boarding-style arrangements sit outside that framework. That is not necessarily a problem, but knowing which framework you are in is worth the question.
What applies regardless is the NDIS regulatory system. The provider must be registered to deliver the support, must meet the NDIS Practice Standards, and must notify the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission of defined incidents. Where someone cannot raise a concern themselves, the Public Advocate in Western Australia is the appropriate contact, and Consumer Protection publishes guidance on tenancy and boarding arrangements if the accommodation question is unclear.
Three questions worth asking before any booking:
- Is this enrolled Specialist Disability Accommodation, a boarding arrangement, or short-stay commercial accommodation?
- Who is on call overnight, and are they on site or on the phone?
- If something goes wrong, will you give me the Commission’s details without being asked twice?
Requesting STA funding
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Choosing an STA provider in Perth
- Who else is staying, and how do you match people? The strongest predictor of whether a stay works, and the question asked least often.
- What ratios apply, and will the same workers be there across the stay? Continuity matters more than facilities.
- Is somebody awake overnight? Now a funding question as much as a safety one.
- Which clinical needs can you genuinely manage? Tube feeding, seizure plans, complex bowel care and high intensity supports each sit within a defined scope of practice. Ask specifically and expect specifics back.
- What does the quote include? Meals are the participant’s responsibility under the guideline, so any quote implying otherwise needs explaining.
- Can you deliver in my town, or only in the metro area? The honest answer is useful even when it is no.
We are a registered NDIS provider rather than a respite centre with a fixed number of beds. Where a particular week or location is not workable, we would rather tell you on the first call.
Where we support STA across Perth and Western Australia
STA Perth: common questions
The guideline generally funds up to 28 days a year, for up to 14 days at a time. For children the NDIA may fund more than 28 days in exceptional situations, but generally will not exceed 60 days a year. It is worth deciding the pattern when you request it, because fourteen consecutive days once annually and a long weekend every six weeks are both 28 days and they are very different in practice for everybody involved.
The published data tells you the size of the gap rather than the cause. In 2022, 80 per cent of WA primary carers reported no unmet need for respite, against 88 per cent in Queensland and 86 per cent nationally, which means roughly one in five WA primary carers said they needed a break they were not getting. The most plausible explanation is thin provider coverage spread across very long distances, so the question is less whether a service exists than whether one exists within reach in the week it is needed. Notably, the national data shows inner regional carers reporting slightly less unmet need than those in major cities, so remoteness by itself does not explain it.
You must either live with your primary informal supports or receive daily drop-in support from them, and their assistance has to exceed six hours a day of disability-related support, sustained over time. A further factor must apply as well: high intensity support needs, intensive behaviour support, limited local in-home services, or carer wellbeing at risk. In much of Western Australia the third of those is simply factual, and it is a stated ground rather than a sympathetic one, so it is worth evidencing with the providers you have contacted and the distances involved.
No, not as an NDIS-funded item. The guideline says you need to buy or provide your own meals while staying in short term accommodation, though existing funding for food preparation support can still be used. This changed how many providers quote, so ask plainly whether meals are inside any figure you are given and, if they are not, how it works — whether you send food, whether groceries are shared, or whether you pay the provider separately.
Bundled daily rates ended on 30 June 2026. Under the 2026-27 schedule, support is claimed hourly by time of day — $73.58 weekday daytime, $103.54 Saturday, $133.50 Sunday, $163.46 public holiday, with higher limits for high intensity support — plus a sleepover item at $311.79 per night where a worker sleeps on site. Accommodation is claimed separately at $162.85 a day, with a matching item where a support worker needs accommodation too. Remote and very remote loadings apply to these items, which is significant across much of Western Australia.
The guideline contemplates funding accommodation for a support worker who needs to stay overnight with you, or where no local support worker is available, and the 2026-27 schedule carries a specific support worker accommodation item at $162.85 a day. That provision is far more relevant in Western Australia than in most of the country. It is not something a provider will usually volunteer, so raise it directly when you are arranging a stay outside the metropolitan area.
Only if the purpose is time apart rather than a holiday. The guideline explicitly excludes holidays, listing cruises, tours, holiday accommodation and airfares, and it also excludes accommodation or programs for carers. The distinction is about purpose and not destination: a week in a cabin with support so that a family carer gets a genuine break can be funded even though the setting is pleasant, while the same week characterised as a holiday for the participant cannot.
Purpose. Short term accommodation exists so you and the family supporting you can have time apart, and runs to roughly 28 days a year. Medium term accommodation exists because your long-term home is not ready, and runs for about 90 days. They are not interchangeable, and the STA guideline states directly that STA is not funded while you are waiting for home modifications, with MTA potentially funded instead.
Further ahead than in most states. WA school holidays and the weeks around Christmas are the tightest periods in Perth, and regional availability is thinner again all year round. Holding STA funding and having somewhere suitable to go in a particular week are two different things. If you have even an approximate sense of when you will need a break, telling a provider early is the single most useful thing you can do.
