What are Healthy Start Vouchers?
Healthy Start is a UK-wide statutory government scheme to help expectant mothers, new parents and their children to eat healthily and get the nutrition they need to have a great start in life.
With Healthy Start, you get free vouchers every week to spend on milk, plain fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables, and infant formula milk. You can also get free vitamins.
Who is eligible for vouchers?
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 Jobseeker’s Allowance
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Child Tax Credit with a family income of £16,190 or less per year
- Pension Credit; or
- Universal Credit with no earned income or total earned income of £408 or less per month for the family. (To find this refer to your Universal Credit award notice in the section “your take home pay for this month”.)
You also qualify if you are under 18 and pregnant, even if you don’t get any of the above benefits.
Each Voucher is to the value of £3.10p, and calculated per qualifying person/child:
- Pregnant 10 weeks will receive 1 voucher per week
- Child Birth-1 year old will receive 2 vouchers per week
- Child 1-4 years old will received 1 voucher per week
Vouchers are issued every 4 weeks to the customer home address.
How to find out more
If you would like to find out more about the scheme and if you are eligible for vouchers, then please click here.
