Sport Waikato has come up with a new funding plan it hopes will be accessible to more communities and in the end have children active for longer.

The organisation announced the latest level of KiwiSport funding under the regional partnership fund - a government-backed initiative to get more school-aged children into organised sport.

Golf Officer from Kiwisport Jason Boobyer coaches Southwell schoolboy Geoffrey Smith through his swing. Photo: Mark taylor/stuff.co.nz

KiwiSport co-ordinator at Sport Waikato Kerin McDonald said a funding restructure for the next three years meant more Waikato communities would be able to apply for funding.

"The main objective from a national point of view for KiwiSport is to get more kids more opportunities and skills to be involved in organised sport," said McDonald.

Barriers to participation were highlighted in a regional review.

"In a lot of our rural communities, a lot of travel is required to be engaged with sport."

And getting parents involved was key to a child's ability to participate in organised sport, said McDonald.

"We often found it's not actually the kids that don't want to play sport, it requires the parent to be a coach or it requires the parent to able to drop a kid off for training or on a Saturday, to get them from A to B.

"Sometimes that's the real barrier."

Sport NZ oversee the KiwiSport fund and has enlisted the 14 regional sports trusts, like Sport Waikato, to manage the funds.

Sport Waikato has managed its share of the fund since 2009.

Feedback from the regional review found Sport Waikato's old funding model needed to change.

"That information helped to shape our application through to Sport NZ," said McDonald.

"There has been a slight tweak and change to ensure we provide the right opportunities to the youth - the ages 5 to 18 - to be involved in organised sport."

Several long term trends in youth sport needed to be addressed.

They wanted to target less active communities and snare children who dropped out of sport at certain ages especially girls who transitioned to high school.

"Year 9 to 10, there tends to be a large drop off in particular," said McDonald. "We've structured funds to help address that as well."

While commitment to the funding was given, McDonald said they did not yet know what level of funding was available.

That was based on the population of children in Sport Waikato's boundary and would be calculated on Ministry of Education school rolls for July.

"We actually haven't got dollar values through to us but I can tell you, previously, in the last funding allotment, there was $837,000 annually to allocate.

"Our figure might be around there but it is still to be confirmed."

The next funding round will target projects that will look to be implemented from Term 4 this year.

- Stuff