Families from low income households across the England will benefit from a new scheme from Monday 27 November, giving free milk and fresh fruit and vegetables to children and mums-to-be, as Healthy Start – first piloted in Devon and Cornwall – extends to the rest of the country.
Healthy Start is replacing the Welfare Food Scheme, first brought in during the Second World War to help combat food shortages. Like the Welfare Food Scheme, Healthy Start will provide people who qualify with vouchers to buy milk and infant formula. However, the new scheme will provide greater flexibility, also allowing parents to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Free vitamin supplements will remain an important part of the new scheme.
The new vouchers will be worth ?2.80 each. Qualifying pregnant women and children over one and under four will get one voucher every week, and children under one year old will get two vouchers a week. Vouchers can be spent with participating retailers – including small businesses and milkmen as well as larger supermarkets and chemists.
Around 20,000 individual retailers across the UK have already signed up to participate in Healthy Start, more than had signed up to the Welfare Food Scheme. Retailers include food co-operatives, box schemes, markets, greengrocers and milk roundsmen as well as supermarkets and chemists.