Nearly half of families eligible are not claiming food vouchers
By Grainne Cuffe, local democracy reporter
Nearly half of the families in Lewisham eligible for free vouchers to spend on milk, formula, and vegetables are not claiming them.
The NHS Healthy Start scheme gives vouchers to support pregnant women, babies and toddlers.
People are eligible if they are pregnant at least 10 weeks or have a child under four and get benefits.
The vouchers can be spent on milk, fresh, frozen, and tinned fruit and vegetables, fresh, dried, and tinned pulses, and infant formula milk. Free vitamins are also included in the scheme.
But it emerged last week that nearly half of those eligible for the vouchers in Lewisham are not claiming them – this equates to £312,000 going unclaimed annually.
In a members question at full council, Councillor James-J Walsh noted the significant drop in uptake and asked what was being done to address it.
The cabinet member for children’s services and school performance, Cllr Chris Barnham, provided a chart with the details of those who are claiming the vouchers versus those eligible who are not.
It showed that in April 2020, only 51 per cent of those eligible were availing of the vouchers, compared to 70 per cent in April 2015.
The trend is similar but slight better nationally.
Cllr Barnham said: “It is regrettably true, as the table below shows, that take up of the Healthy Start vouchers has declined nationally in recent years, and Lewisham has not been immune to this.
“Although over the last year Lewisham’s performance has been a little above the London average.
“Current estimates suggest that in Lewisham £312,000 of Healthy Start vouchers are unclaimed annually.
“The coronavirus pandemic has unfortunately exacerbated this trend.
“Services including health have been significantly disrupted and the advice to all is to stay at home.
“This has meant that although more families have become eligible, they have had limited contact with health care professionals and valuable opportunities to promote the scheme have been missed.”
The cabinet member said it is important to promote the scheme and laid out the plans to tackle the low uptake in future.
The council plans to refresh its food poverty action plan by holding an initial food summit, work with nurses to support pregnant women under 18 to apply for the scheme, and request Lewisham uptake data from the NHS that is broken down per postcode to help find eligible families.
It also aims to work with the council’s concessionary awards team to find families with children who qualify for free school meals or free education and childcare.
“These groups of people are likely to be eligible for Healthy Start vouchers,” Cllr Barnham said.
He said the council will also look into a Health Start page.