Every child deserves the chance to grow up healthy, with fresh fruit and veg forming an everyday part of the foods they eat. Healthy Start helps families on low incomes to buy nutritious food, but its potential remains limited.
At Alexandra Rose, our Rose Vouchers for Early Years programmes remove the barriers to buying and eating fresh food and provide access to support from trusted community partners. We believe Healthy Start could achieve so much more by learning from this approach.
Our experience shows that many of the families struggling to afford nutritious food fall outside the Healthy Start eligibility criteria. Of the families currently receiving Rose Vouchers through our programmes, 40% are not eligible for Healthy Start, while 25% have no recourse to public funds (NRPF).
At the moment, Healthy Start support ends when a child turns four, leaving a gap before they start school. We want to see eligibility extended until a child’s fifth birthday or starting school, whichever comes first, so that support continues through this critical stage of development.
Families with young children and No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) status can be particularly vulnerable, facing financial hardship whilst also being unable to access many forms of public support. In a survey of 30 families with NRPF accessing our Liverpool programme, 47% of children and 70% of adults ate fewer than five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Nine in ten families identified cost as their biggest barrier.
One parent explained:
“What we have is not enough to cover everything we need to buy, such as food and nappies.”
Another Rose Voucher recipient told us:
“It’s a difficult situation. I have nothing left over from Universal Credit after paying for the rent and bills. The Rose Vouchers help a lot. I take my vouchers to the market and buy some veggies and fruit to give my children.”
The Government must expand Healthy Start eligibility to include all families receiving Universal Credit, including those with NRPF, ensuring they are not left without support to meet their children’s nutritional needs.
We also understand that the benefits of access to fresh food go beyond what families can afford to buy today. The early years are a crucial opportunity to introduce children to a variety of fruit and veg, building confidence around food and establishing habits that can last a lifetime. Rose Voucher participants regularly tell us how access to fresh produce has helped their children to eat a broader range of healthy foods.
One parent said:
“If I didn’t have Rose Vouchers I would stick to my daughter’s fruit and vegetables preferences, but with the vouchers I can get different kinds of fruit and vegetables that she might not normally try.”
Another parent described how these habits also impacted other children:
“Friends look up to my children when they see them eating fruit and veg. My friends say they didn’t know her kids like veg, they are being a good influence on other kids.”
We are also calling on the Government to make Healthy Start more accessible and better connected to wider family support. Alexandra Rose works with local community and healthcare partners who build trusted relationships with families, helping them access food, as well as a broader range of wrap around support services that help to build longer term financial resilience.
Devolving responsibility for delivery could help ensure this joined-up approach becomes the norm, rather than depending on where a family lives.