A Healthy Start for Liverpool

What’s included:

About The Healthy Start Scheme
Become a Healthy Start Community Champion
Applying to join the Healthy Start Scheme
Use Healthy Start with The Queen of Greens
Support for Community Food Spaces
A Healthy Start for Liverpool Report 2022
Frequently Asked Questions

About The Healthy Start Scheme

Healthy Start is a national scheme that provides help for eligible families and those who are pregnant to buy healthy food and milk.

Healthy Start includes a pre-paid card allocated £4.25 per week (£8.50 during the first year of a child’s life) to be spent on milk, fruit, and vegetables, infant formula, and access to Healthy Start vitamins. If a participant remains eligible from 10 weeks pregnant until their child is age 4, £1,200 could be accessed via the scheme.

However, since the transition to a digitalised scheme, uptake has reduced to just 65% across Liverpool with £758,521.24 going unclaimed in 2021.

Increasing awareness and uptake of the Healthy Start Scheme across Liverpool is crucial as it could make a significant difference to some of Liverpool’s lowest income households, improving the quality and quantity of good food their household consumes, which is especially important during pregnancy and early years development.

The Healthy Start card can be used in any shop that sells healthy food and milk and accepts Mastercard including supermarkets, your local shop, pharmacies, markets, petrol stations, the majority of the Community Food Spaces and the Queen of Greens mobile greengrocer.

Become a Healthy Start Community Champion

Feeding Liverpool offer regular free introductory training to The Healthy Start Scheme, with trainees becoming Healthy Start Community Champions, able to promote the scheme in their communities.

This training is aimed at people in Liverpool who support pregnant women and parents/carers with young children aged 0–4 years, including:

• Voluntary sector volunteers or staff members – including organisations that support families through the Holidays Activities and Food Programme

• Children centre staff, health-care related workers, and wellbeing professionals

View our event page here to see when the next training will be taking place or watch our online training below.

Applying to join the Healthy Start Scheme

If you’re more than 10 weeks pregnant or have a child under 4, you may be eligible for the Healthy Start scheme.

If you’re on certain benefits – or if you’re under 18 and pregnant – you’ll get help towards your weekly shop for buying milk, some healthy foods and free Healthy Start vitamins.

You will receive a pre-paid card which will be topped up every four weeks with the following:

£4.25 for each week of your pregnancy from 10 weeks onwards
£8.50 per week for each child aged under 1 year
£4.25 per week for each child between 1 and 4 years old.

You can use the money on your Healthy Start card to pay for fresh or frozen fruit and veg, fresh, dried, and tinned beans and pulses, plain cow’s milk and infant formula milk.

You can also use your card to collect Healthy Start vitamins that support you during pregnancy and breastfeeding and vitamin drops for babies and young children from your local Children’s Centre. Find your local Children’s Centre here.

Visit https://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/how-to-apply/ for a full list of eligibility criteria and to apply for Healthy Start, you will need the following to hand:

name
address
date of birth
National Insurance number
baby’s due date (if you’re pregnant)
benefit award letter if you’re over 18

You must make sure that the details you are entering are exactly how they appear on your benefits claim letter otherwise the system won’t be able to find you and this might delay your application.

If you require support with your application please contact Jackie Wotton from Citizen’s Advice Liverpool at [email protected] or 0151 522 1400 ext 1316

No recourse to public funds

The Department of Health and Social Care has temporarily extended the NHS Healthy Start scheme to British children aged under four, whose parent/guardian meets the below criteria.People could qualify for the temporary extension if:
• they have at least one British child under four years old, • their family earns £408 or less per month after tax, and• they cannot claim ‘public funds’ for example benefits – either because of their immigration status or because they do not have an immigration statusPeople who can demonstrate they meet all of these criteria can apply by emailing: [email protected].

Please note that not all children born in the UK are automatically British, people can check their British citizenship here.

Use Healthy Start with The Queen of Greens

Healthy Start cards are accepted on the Queen of Greens mobile greengrocer

Queen of Greens bus brings affordable fresh fruit and vegetables to communities across Liverpool and Knowsley

The mobile greengrocer visits 29 stops each week including schools, health and community centres including Fazakerley hospital, providing people with better opportunities to shop for nutritious food closer to their home or workplace.

View the Queen of Greens bus stop map here

Community Healthy Start Champions Training

In 2022 we established the Community Healthy Start Champions training, to increase awareness of the scheme across the city.

We are encouraging volunteers and staff from emergency and community food organisations, community groups and health care services to watch the training and promote Healthy Start to those who may be eligible for the benefit. The NHS have produced a series of social media assets around Healthy Start, particularly as it has transferred to become digital. They are available here. Materials include animations, email signatures, posters and a social media toolkit.

Our training is led by Dr Naomi Maynard and Annette James. It introduces people to the Healthy Start scheme, explaining who is eligible and how people can be supported to apply. We also outline what it means to be a Community Healthy Start Champion.

Further support is available specifically for Community Food Spaces:

Sum Up machines

Feeding Britain have offered to pay for any community food space who doesn’t already have a sum up machine so we can all accept the Healthy Start cards. Get in touch with Naomi on [email protected] if you need help with this.
Accepting payments

Your Local Pantry have agreed a 50% split in their membership fees between Healthy Start card and their regular cash/card payments. Other community food spaces need to think through the practicalities of how accepting card payments can work with their model.