Kindergartens in 25 local government areas, including Horsham, will receive funding next year from the first stage of the roll out.

Early Childhood Education Minister Jenny Mikakos said the funding would allow kindergartens to engage extra professional support through speech therapists, child psychologists and literacy experts.

Horsham and District Kindergarten Association executive officer Pauline Butler said she was excited Wimmera children would benefit.

“We will have a bit of flexibility depending on the needs of individual children as to what specialised care we fund,” she said.

“Hopefully we will be lucky enough to be on that first roll-out list, so we’re just waiting to see when we’ll get the funding.

“Then we will be able to work out where to best use the funding to its advantage.”

She said low-income families in particular would appreciate the assistance. 

“Something we see often are families struggling financially to afford ongoing costs associated with specialist support, such as speech therapy,” she said.

“We do have many vulnerable families who attend our kinders, so any kind of financial support that we receive puts the pressure off them.”

Regional Development Minister Jaala Pulford said the need for kindergarten funding was highlighted through the Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Partnership.

“We’ve listened to the community in the Wimmera Southern Mallee and we know more needs to be done to improve early childhood development,” she said.

“This shows that the Regional Partnerships are delivering real improvements for local communities.”

Funding will be rolled out to all services that run state-funded kinder programs across the next three years.