Healthy Start Vouchers on the road

Healthy Start Vouchers on the road

With food inflation at its highest rate since September 2011, making food affordable is more important now than ever. With support from Sainsbury’s, TBBT is working to keep young families eating healthily.

?According to recent ONS data, food prices rose by 5.9% in the 12 months to March 2022. These budget-busting rises are forcing families to make difficult food choices, skipping meals and shrinking?in food type and diversity as people look for cheaper options.

A vital part of having a healthy diet is a full complement of fruit and veg with at least five different portions a day. This is one of the reasons TBBT puts fruit and veg at the heart of its offering because we?know this is the produce that families really struggle to access affordably.?

But there is other help too for low income families. Healthy Start Vouchers are a vital benefit for expectant and established parents and carers on benefits with children aged 4 and under. For each qualifying child, a family receives ￡4.25 a week to spend on fruit and veg as well a milk and vitamins.

Yet, Healthy Start Vouchers are significantly undervalued. Research by charity Sustain shows that more than ￡63.5 million in vouchers went unclaimed last year because of low awareness of the scheme with take up at only 54%.

However, they can make a significant difference to diets. TBBT accepts Healthy Start Vouchers at all of its hubs. Using a standard ￡4.25 voucher brings the cost of our standard family bags down to ￡3.25 including a large bag of fresh fruit and veg. But beyond our work, most of the major supermarket retailers have added extra value to them to topping up with an extra bag of veg or adding ￡1 to the available spend. And now they are digital, people can pay for their groceries almost anywhere from the corner-shop to social supermarket to high street retailer.

So – with financial support from Sainsbury’s – we’ve been making it our mission to encourage everyone who is eligible to sign up and take advantage of the scheme.

Since the start of the year members of the TBBT team have been visiting hubs, promoting the scheme and equipped with a tablet to check eligibility and sign people up whilst they collect their shopping. In doing so, we are tackling digital exclusion and language barriers at a one-to-one level with direct positive impact for individuals.

As well as grassroots action, in the North West, TBBT co-chairs the Greater Manchester Food Security Action Network's Healthy Start group, developing and delivering training to agencies across the region from midwives and community health teams to nurseries, play centres and community early years providers.

As TBBT continues to grow, we are also planning training for our volunteers so that this can be an ongoing programme of support across all our hubs.

We know that Healthy Start can have a significant impact for parents and carers with young families. Father of seven, Paul and his wife receive Healthy Start Vouchers for two of their children who are 12 weeks and three years old. They’ve been using the vouchers for 12 years since they were first pregnant. At the moment they are receiving ￡12.75 a week, paid monthly onto the new digital voucher.

“Using TBBT is massively helpful in feeding the kids. We try to eat as healthily as possible and TBBT helps us keep the fridge stocked with fresh fruit so the kids don’t snack on junk food. We get all kinds of things we’ve never tried before or wouldn’t be able to afford in the shops, like pineapples, mangoes, avocados, even asparagus and kale. Being able to use our Healthy Start Vouchers has helped loads as it brings the prices down and means we can just top up with what we’re missing in the shops.”

Paul encourages everyone who is eligible to apply for their vouchers. “Applying for them online is actually really straightforward – all you need is your benefits letter and all your personal information so that you have the details to hand. It’s absolutely worth it, especially now you can use them in so many places from corner shops to supermarkets. And TBBT, of course!”