Families not being told when elderly relatives have died, old people found surrounded by food scraps and with maggots — this is the picture painted by witnesses at the first regional hearings of the aged care royal commission.

"Older Aboriginal people, what they're saying about the residential care is it's pretty much a death sentence to them," Aboriginal research officer Rosalyn Malay told the commission in Broome.

The comment referred to not just concerns about physical services and treatment, but also a sense that elderly people become cut off from their communities and families when they enter facilities operated by large companies with headquarters thousands of kilometres away.

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'She's not going to die'

A series of incidents leading up to the death of an elderly woman in residential care in Broome have been described as "negligence" by her daughter, who spoke to the ABC and requested to remain anonymous.

She said her mother slipped on water from a leaking shower that had gone unrepaired, even after she had reported it to staff as a risk at Broome's Germanus Kent House.

She said she was never contacted about her mother's fall but heard about it from a friend who was visiting the facility.

When the woman went there, she found her mother in bed and in pain.

"I told them, 'Could you please bring an ambulance, I need to get her to the doctor," she told the ABC.

"They said: 'Who's going to pay for the ambulance?'"

Once her mother got to hospital she was found to have a fractured hip and was medevaced to Perth for treatment.

Germanus Kent is the only residential aged care facility in Broome. ( ABC Kimberley: Matthew Bamford )

After her mother recovered and returned to residential care in Broome, the daughter went away for the weekend, only to return to a message that her mother was not eating.

When she visited her mother, she said she found her surrounded by food scraps in an unchanged bed.

"She had lots of cups of tea (cold), biscuits, dried bread, medication, ashes, tobacco, the bed's not made — she was just lying there," the daughter said.

"The doctor said, 'She's going to die', and I said, 'No, she's not going to die, she's going to the hospital right now'."

Her mother lived for another 12 days before dying due to what was said to be renal failure.

"She was so strong, bright and very informative in her language and her knowledge and her history, but we lost her because the care was so poor."

Southern Cross Care WA, the Perth-based organisation that runs Germanus Kent House in Broome, declined to comment on the case, saying it was in ongoing discussions with the royal commission.

Earlier in the week, the commission questioned the acting business manager of the Broome facility who confirmed a separate incident in which an advanced dementia patient was found with maggots in her mouth.

'It's called warehousing'

Stories of negligence at other regional care facilities also emerged at the hearings in Broome.

Maureen O'Meara, the chief executive of Aarnja, the regional body for Kimberley Aboriginal people, said she had heard concerning stories from the care facility in Derby.

"[One woman's] great-grandmother was dirty, the clothing that she had was gone, anything they had given her was gone," Ms O'Meara said of one story she'd been told.

She said the facility was isolated from the local community and there were instances when families were unaware that their elderly relatives were dead.

"People are dying in aged cared facilities and their families don't always know ... that's just so culturally irresponsible."

Maureen O'Meara says the system is failing Aboriginal people. ( ABC Kimberley: Ben Collins )

Derby's Numbala Nunga facility is run by the Perth-based Juniper, which describes itself as a "community benefit organisation".

Ms O'Meara, however, said Numbala Nunga was failing Aboriginal people.

"We did have a word for it when I worked in the health system, and it's called warehousing," she said.

"So it's about warehousing our mob, just put them in care, they live their life there until they die."

Call for more funding

Juniper chief executive Chris Hall said he understood the concerns people had about moving into residential care in Derby, but that his organisation was doing the best it could with limited Commonwealth funding.

"The need for greater funding and resourcing to support remote and very remote aged care services is an Australian Government responsibility that needs to be urgently addressed," he said in a statement.

But Ms O'Meara said providing appropriate aged care in areas like the Kimberley, where around half the population was Indigenous, would take more than an increase in funding.

She said she doubted that an organisation based in a city thousands of kilometres away could bridge the gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous culture, language and the role elderly Aboriginal people filled in their communities.

"When you've got big non-government organisations that have responsibility of these services, that's not their outlook, they're not understanding that need for the whole of family to be involved."

She called for a rethink of the model of delivering aged care in regions like the Kimberley.

"The big NGOs should have a transition plan to hand over to Aboriginal community control — we find that if things are Aboriginal-led and place-based, that empowers our own mob to be able to make really good decisions.