My grandmother went into a retirement village - firstly here in Perth and then down south.

She paid a fairly heft sum to buy in - I think from memory it was about $300,000 amost 15 years ago. That "bought" her her unit for life, and upon moving out or her death a refund was made of some but not all of the buy in price. There was no allowance for capital growth etc. She got included in that price I think regular maintenance, common garden areas etc. She was in what is called independent living, but there were panic buttons within her unit if she got into trouble, and also someone usually did a wander around every day to check on people. Given the community living set up, all the other oldies got to know her too so there was a good grapevine service that soon got going when someone wasn't doing so well.

The great part about the independent living is that they are almost guaranteed a place in low or high care within the nursery home part of the village when the time comes. Makes transition a lot quicker and easier. When my gran moved down south when my folks did she ended up having to move into the high care nursing home from her independent villa.

Having looked at moving her back up to Perth when my folks moved up here again, it was very hard to find low or high care nursing care for her (and sadly she was way beyond independent living by then).

All nursing homes must have a portion of their intake that is buy-in free (or greatly reduced) and then I think some of the oldie's pension is taken to cover costs - not entirely sure though what sort of money. These places are usually pretty hard to come by though, and the waiting lists are enormous.,

Good luck. I hope you can get your dad moved somewhere closer to you and where there are people that can keep an eye on him.