A day after national hearing group First Voice said the wider availability of testing to diagnose hearing impairment in newborns would result in the need for extra funding to treat them, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the Better Start For Children program as part of a $200million disability funding package.

Ms Gillard said a maximum of $6000 would be able to be spent in each financial year on early intervention services, and families would have up to their child's seventh birthday to use the funding.

But Hear the Children early intervention centre co-president Yvonne Keane said it wasn't enough.

The centre offers weekly therapy to teach hearing-impaired children to listen and speak so they can attend a mainstream kindergarten. Ms Keane said while families could claim up to $6000 in one financial year, they would be allowed only $12,000 in total until the child turned seven, by which time, service costs for one child could total more than $75,000. ``[It's] not nearly enough when you consider the real cost of early intervention services is around $15,000 per year,'' she said. ``While the proposed Better Start for Children initiative acknowledges the importance of early intervention, the policy falls a long way short of taking the financial pressure off life-changing early intervention services, some of whom battle every day to keep their doors open.''

Ms Keane was also disappointed that a government fact sheet on the Better Start For Children policy stated it would cover services such as occupational therapists, audiologists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists and psychologists, but failed to acknowledge the importance of specialised early intervention centres. ``For children with hearing impairment in particular, structured and consistent early intervention is essential for them to be able to develop age-appropriate spoken language,'' she said. ``The years between birth and five are the most critical language learning years, and without early intervention, a child with a hearing impairment will be unlikely to develop intelligible speech.''