Feeding Liverpool have published a new report that assesses the Healthy Boost Project after its first year of operation.

The report’s evaluation of the scheme is informed by monitoring gathered by the Alexandra Rose Charity and the University of Liverpool, as well as in-person evaluation surveys conducted by Feeding Liverpool. Documenting feedback from over 60 people, the report identifies that the project has been successful in:

• Helping families to improve their diets by ensuring that a range of healthy produce is easily accessible.
• Supporting families financially and enabling them to afford healthier food options.
• Improving families’ physical and mental wellbeing by making healthy eating a priority for them.
• Providing a convenient service at locations close to the homes of many families.
• Fostering a sense of community for families through a shared experinece of being brought together by food.
• Addressing the specific needs of the families it serves and who would otherwise have been overlooked.

In Liverpool, one in three adults are food insecure, one in two adults are not eating five fruits and vegetables a day, and one in three children are living in poverty. The Healthy Start Scheme addresses this concern; it is a national, means-tested, statutory public health initiative that ‘provides a nutritional safety net and improves access to a healthy diet for low-income families.’

In December 2022, a Healthy Start steering group was established in Liverpool, with a range of key partners working together to increase awareness and uptake of the scheme. As part of their findings, the group noticed that a number of families were unable to access the scheme due to:

• Having no recourse to public funds.
• Not meeting the financial eligibility criteria, despite needing the support.
• Being Kinship Carers.

A subsequent scoping exercise was then undertaken to assess what alternative offers were available to these groups. When these were found to be limited, it was decided that the development of an alternative offer would be required to provide adequate support for these families.

The Healthy Boost model supports families and pregnant women who are not eligible for the Healthy Start Scheme to access vouchers that can be redeemed for fresh fruits and vegetables on the Queen of Greens mobile greengrocer. The model is a combined offer that expands on the previously existing Alexandra Rose Charity initiative – the programme supported 247 families between January 2023 and March 2023 by offering vouchers that could be redeemed for fruits and vegetables – by developing a local voucher-based scheme that is coordinated by Feeding Liverpool.

Lucy Antal, Director at Alchemic Kitchen CIC and Lead for Food Justice at FoodRise, said:

It is great to read about the impact that the provision of Healthy Boost vouchers is making in the community. We are pleased that we can support it with our Queen of Greens bus service.

The criteria for the initiative remains the same as the one used as part of the Healthy Start Scheme in relation to supporting women who are pregnant and families with children under four years old, but it is also directed to supporting those who have no recourse to public funds or who fall just outside of the financial eligibility bracket. Currently, families are identified as eligibile for the Healthy Boost Scheme via a range of services and groups, as well as seven children’s centres. This approach of working with local organisations and advocating for them to be at the centre of developing solutions has allowed for the roll-out of the scheme to become personalised through staff who are best placed to assess the needs of the people they engage with regularly.

Each voucher issued is worth £1, with each eligible child entitled to four vouchers per week from the time they turn one years old until they reach primary school age or, alternatively, if the mother is pregnant. This voucher entitlement increases to six vouchers per week from the time a baby is born until they turn one years old to support with both breast feeding and weaning. The scheme currently supports approximately 354 families, with an average of two eligible children per household.

Julia Bayton, Early Action Manager at Refugee Women Connect, said: 

Healthy Boost is a scheme which makes a huge difference to the health of the pregnant women and young children with whom we are working.

 

Women seeking asylum live in extreme poverty, unable to provide nutritious food to their children due not only to the cost of fresh food, but also the inability to access affordable food near their accomodation.

 

This scheme brings together fruit and vegetable vouchers and a mobile greengrocer van, which travels to our drop-in – meaning that women can receive their vouchers and shop from fresh food alongside accessing all of the other support we provide.

 

When women have regular access to fresh fruits and vegetables, they notice the difference in their health and wellbeing. Midwives also notice the improvement in the health of pregnant women. I’m really proud of the role Refugee Women Connect plays in the Healthy Boost Scheme, which brings together organisations across Liverpool to tackle food poverty and improve the health of our city’s children.

Feeding Liverpool’s work with Kinship Carers Liverpool identified that Kinship families are more likely to live in deprived areas, have lower incomes than any other group raising children and include people who are economically inactive and deprived across all measures. It was, therefore, also agreed that the project could relieve the pressure on the household budgets by instead providing families with a reliable supply of locally sourced fresh fruits and vegetables each week. Working in partnership with a local produce supplier who both sources and delivers good quality produce, the initiative now supports between 30 and 40 Kinship families each week by issuing them with fruit and vegetable bags during their weekly wellbeing sessions.

Beth Bradshaw, Policy Lead at Feeding Liverpool, said: 

We were pleased to see an uplift to the Healthy Start Scheme announced as part of the NHS 10 Year Plan earlier this month, raising the value of payments by just under 10% from £4.25 to £4.65 and double for children under 12 months. However, this uplift unfortunately does nothing to support the families and pregnant women who currently marginally miss out on this vital nutritional safety net.

 

Our latest report illustrates just how valuable the Healthy Boost Project is in increasing access to good food and tackling food insecurity for some of the households in Liverpool that need it most.

 

We urge the government to use this uplift as a stepping stone to address some of the wider improvements needed in Healthy Start, specifically extending to families with no recourse to public funds and considering options for auto-enrolment to the scheme, so that all families who are eligible get the support they are entitled to. This would greatly support Number 10 in achieving their ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever.

The report can be read here.