Healthy Start: unlocking its potential to support with family food bills and tackle child food insecurity

The Healthy Start Scheme provides a critical nutritional safety net for low-income families with young children to afford fruit, veg and milk.

Yet it remains underpowered and is not sufficiently resourced to adequately address the impacts of the cost of living crisis on very young children.

As this briefing from Sustain and The Food Foundation shows, Healthy Start is a good investment and expanding eligibility to all families in receipt of Universal Credit would return net benefits to society of £7.7 billion over 10 years as a result of the reductions in food insecurity, increased household disposable income, and wider economic gains.