Give your child the best start in life through local kindergarten programs. No matter where you come from or what language you speak, our friendly team can help you access inclusive early education.
Emmanuelle Maurel is our Early Years Inclusion and Access Officer. She helps local families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds navigate early education, parenting and wellbeing services.
“Understanding the system is quite hard even for English-speaking families so adding language barriers on top of it can be really challenging,” Emmanuelle said.
“Not being able to communicate your expectations and concerns with the early years educators can also be quite confronting, resulting in some families choosing not to send their children to kinder.”
Emmanuelle said that most of a child’s brain development occurs before the age of five, so early intervention provides a great foundation for a child’s overall development, which impacts their adult life.
“Children who do not attend kindergarten are 2.7 times more likely to be developmentally vulnerable for language and cognitive skills in prep and 40 per cent of children not participating in kindergarten in 2021 were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds,” Emmanuelle said.
“By supporting brain development through education we can change the trajectories of children’s lives and this can result in better life-long outcomes, especially for vulnerable children and their families.”
Emmanuelle’s role includes assisting CALD families with kindergarten enrolment forms, creating resources in different languages and helping providers understand how to make diverse families feel more included and welcome.
“The impact we can have through local outreach is very exciting,” Emmanuelle said.
“Sometimes, a simple task like sending an email to an early childhood service can make a huge difference to a family’s life and wellbeing. It is so rewarding. I love the community that I work in.”
To learn more about the City of Melbourne’s early education, child-care, parenting, family support, and maternal and child health services, visit For children and families. You can also visit our Childcare and Kindergarten pages.
