Client demographics

In 2017–18:

  • nearly all (91%) clients in Western Australia in 2017–18 received treatment for
    their own drug use, of which, most (67%) were male (Figure 13; Table SC WA.1)
  • clients receiving treatment for someone else’s drug use were more likely to be female (69%)
  • over half (54%) of clients were aged 20–39 years (Table SC WA.2)
  • over 1 in 5 (22%) clients identified as Indigenous Australians, which is higher than the national rate (16%) (Tables SC WA.3 and SC.4)
  • the majority (82%) of clients were born in Australia and nearly all reported English as their preferred language (98%) (Tables SC WA.21 and SC WA.22).

Patterns of service use

In Western Australia, of the 18,589 total clients who received treatment in 2017–18:

  • 61% (11,339) received treatment in 2017–18 only
  • 11% (2,005) received treatment in both 2016–17 and 2017–18
  • 3.9% (725) received treatment in each year from 2015–16 to 2017–18
  • 1.9% (346) received treatment in each year from 2014–15 to 2017–18
  • 1.7% (307) received treatment in all years, from 2013–14 to 2017–18.

Over the period 2013–14 to 2017–18, a total of 64,209 clients received treatment in Western Australia. Of those:

  • 75% (48,315) received treatment in only a single year
  • 17% (10,878) received treatment in any 2 of the 5 years
  • 6% (3,576) received treatment in any 3 of the 5 years
  • 1.8% (1,133) received treatment in any 4 of the 5 years
  • 0.5% (307) received treatment in all 5 collection years.