Healthy Start
What is Healthy Start?
Healthy Start is a government scheme which aims to help children have a healthy start in life. It supports pregnant women and families with babies and young children who are on benefits, and young pregnant women, under 18 years old, by providing weekly vouchers which can be used to buy fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables, fresh milk and infant formula milk. Vouchers are sent to recipients monthly through the post.
Healthy Start also provides coupons which can be exchanged for women’s and children’s vitamins locally.
How do people get hold of these vitamins?
Every 8 weeks, families will be sent a vitamin coupon as part of their usual Healthy Start voucher letter. It will remind them to claim their free Healthy Start vitamin supplements and will specify which supplement should be claimed (women’s or children’s). There will be one green coupon for each member of the family entitled to vitamins.
Click here for a list of health centres and clinics in Manchester where the vitamins are available.
In Manchester we have extended the Healthy Start vitamin scheme so that all pregnant women can receive free vitamin supplements until their child is 1 year old. Children will also receive free vitamin drops until they are 1 year old.
Ask your health visitor or midwife for more information on the Manchester vitamin scheme, and details of how to obtain the vitamins.
An e-booklet explaining the Healthy Start scheme in Arabic, Bengali, French, Gujurati, Hindi, Mandarin, Polish, Punjabi, Somali and Urdu is available here.
Who is eligible to be on the National scheme?
You qualify for Healthy Start if you’re at least 10 weeks pregnant or have a child under four years old AND you or your family get…
- Income Support
- Income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance, or
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, or
- Child tax credit (but not working tax credit unless your family is receiving working tax credit run-on only*)
- AND an annual family income of £16,900 or less in 2011/12
*Working Tax Credit run-on is the Working Tax Credit received in the 4 weeks immediately after stopping working for 16 hours or more per week.
You also qualify if you are under 18 and pregnant, even if you don’t get any of the above benefits or tax credits. Once the baby is born you will continue to qualify if you meet the criteria above.
The Healthy Start website is www.healthystart.nhs.uk.
There are recipes available at http://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/all-recipes/
What to buy with the vouchers
There are lots of great foods you can buy with your Healthy Start vouchers:
Milk
This must be plain cow’s milk and can be whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed. It must also be pasteurised, sterilised, long-life or ultra-heat treated (UHT).
You can’t spend your vouchers on flavoured milk, coloured milk, evaporated milk, condensed milk, goat’s milk, soya milk, powdered milk (unless it’s infant formula) or milk with anything added to it such as milkshakes or vitamin-enriched milk.
Plain fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables
This means any kind of plain fresh or frozen fruit or vegetables, whole or chopped, packaged or loose.
You can’t spend your vouchers on any fruit or vegetables which have added ingredients such as fat (oil), salt, sugar or flavourings – including oven chips and battered onion rings. You also can’t spend them on dried, canned, juiced or pre-cooked fruit and vegetables or on smoothies.
Infant formula milk
This must be infant formula milk that is based on cow’s milk and says on the packaging that it can be used from birth.
You can’t spend your vouchers on infant formulas that are not based on cow’s milk – such as soya formulas or follow-on formula milks that say on the packaging that they are for babies aged six months or older.