Over 100 organisations including retailers Sainsbury’s, Iceland and Co-op are calling on the UK government to extend the Healthy Start scheme, with research showing 750,000 pregnant women and children from low-income families are missing out.
The Healthy Start Scheme was set up by the Labour government 20 years ago to provide support to families in low-income households to afford fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk and vitamins during pregnancy and a child’s earliest years.
A new report from The Food Foundation has found that households on Universal Credit including pregnant women, babies and young children, only qualify if they earn under £408 a month, and support stops when a child turns four years old. The food charity said this “leaves a gap” before children start school and can access free school meals.
Ahead of the autumn budget next week the retailers, alongside health, education, poverty, industry, academia, and local government organisations – including Feeding Britain, Save the Children UK and Bernardo’s – are calling for increased access to the scheme.
They are calling for eligibility to be expanded to all pregnant women and children on Universal Credit, and to families with children under five rather than four, closing a gap before they start school.
According to The Food Foundation, expanding Healthy Start to all families on Universal Credit would deliver a return on investment of £2.36 for every £1 spent. It would amount to a £7.7bn gain over 10 years as a result of the reductions in food insecurity, increased household disposable income, and wider economic gains, according to the charity.
It said the government had already shown it was “possible to close this gap” by extending free school meals to every school-age child in a Universal Credit household from September this year. Babies and pre-school children “shouldn’t be left behind while their older siblings are supported”, the Food Foundation said.
The call comes after Sainsbury’s unveiled plans to reintroduce its Healthy Start top-up for low-income families with young children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Users of the scheme are eligible to apply for an additional £3 a week towards fruit, vegetables, beans and pulses for six weeks. Sainsbury’s is the first retailer to offer additional support since the scheme’s digital transition to a prepaid card format in 2022.
“Good nutrition in the earliest years lays the all-important foundations for children’s health, learning and future opportunities,” said The Food Foundation executive director Anna Taylor. “Yet Healthy Start is shutting out many of the families it was created to help.
“Free School Meals now provide a stronger safety net once children enter school; we urgently need sustained nutritional support from pregnancy to that point. Expanding Healthy Start to all families on Universal Credit and to every child under five would close this unacceptable gap and turn the government’s wider early-years ambitions into healthier childhoods.”
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