Kirklees health chief signs letter calling on Government to pump millions into Healthy Start scheme

She is among more than 50 signatories to a letter urging Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Matt Hancock to make the change to the Healthy Start scheme, which provides pregnant women and low-income families with children under 4 with free vitamins and food vouchers to buy vegetables, fruit, pulses and milk.

Ms Spencer-Henshall and her colleagues want the Government to pump an extra £115m a year into improving Healthy Start, which will include boosting the value of vouchers from £3.10 to £4.25 a week.

They also want the scheme to be expanded to every pregnant woman and household with children under four in receipt of Universal Credit or equivalent benefits and for a £5m communications campaign to be funded.

Their call comes as it was revealed that not everyone eligible for the “targeted and efficient” scheme was benefiting from it.

Meanwhile the value of the voucher has not risen in line with inflation since 2009.

Ms Spencer-Henshall, Strategic Director for Public Health at Kirklees Council, is among the senior healthcare professionals operating in public health, civil society, academia and local government to sign the letter.

It urges the Government to adopt a recommendation taken from the National Food Strategy Part One to improve the Healthy Start scheme.

The recommendation is one of three “key asks” adopted by England footballer Marcus Rashford in his #EndChildFoodPoverty campaign.

The letter, sent today (Nov 2) also coincides with the release last week of the latest National Child Measurement Programme NHS report for 2019/20, which highlights growing health inequities in the UK, with children living in the most deprived areas now more than twice as likely to have obesity than those living in the least deprived areas by the time they start school.

Last month the council said it would pay for free school meals for disadvantaged children during the October half-term break and for future school holidays.

The move, which will benefit 14,000 youngsters in the borough, followed a vote to reject a House of Commons motion to extend free school meals into the holiday period.

Senior councillor Carole Pattison described it as “one of the easiest decisions we have had to make”.