Healthy Start is a national scheme that provides help for eligible families and those who are pregnant to buy healthy food and milk.
It includes a pre-paid card which is allocated £4.25 per week (£8.50 during the first year of a child’s life) to be spent on milk, fruit, vegetables and infant formula. Access to free Healthy Start vitamins are also included to support early years development.
Increasing awareness and uptake of Healthy Start across Liverpool is crucial as it could make a significant difference to some of Liverpool’s lowest income households by improving both the quality and quantity of good food their household consumes. 1 in 4 eligible pregnant women and families are still missing out of the Healthy Start scheme.
If a participant remains eligible from 10 weeks pregnant until their child is 4, they could access £1,200 overall via the scheme. Although Liverpool’s uptake of the scheme has increased to 78% since the transition to a digitalised scheme, there are still many eligible families missing out.
Feeding Liverpool have created a new NHS Healthy Start video aimed at families to help promote the scheme, increase uptake across the city and improve access to good food for families across the city.
This video encourages eligible families to apply for the scheme and how to do so. It also provides them with more information on what the scheme is and where they can use their pre-paid Healthy Start cards across Liverpool.
The video highlights that the Healthy Start card can be used in any shop that sells healthy food and milk, and which accepts Mastercard. This includes supermarkets, local shops, pharmacies, markets, petrol stations, majority of Community Food Spaces across Liverpool and the Queen of Greens mobile greengrocer.
Feeding Liverpool have also updated their Healthy Start website pages, creating one specifically for professionals and another for those wanting to apply for the scheme to make it easier for people to access the right pages.
“Increasing awareness and uptake of the Healthy Start Scheme is crucial as it can make a real difference to some of Liverpool’s lowest income households by supporting families to access good quality food, which is especially important during pregnancy and early years development.”
Liverpool City Council’s Associate Director of Public Health – Children and Young People & Health Improvement, Melisa Campbell,