healthy start scheme

At your first midwife appointment, did they mention the healthy start scheme and that you can claim £4.25 per week from week ten of your pregnancy?

I wasn’t told this until week twenty-five by my local community midwife and they don’t do back payments, so this was a significant loss. Because my partner and are on ESA too, it was a nightmare to claim. None of the emails work or were responded too, healthy.start@nhsbsa.nhs.uk or Healthystartclaim@dhsc.gov.uk so these were more and more weeks where I lost these payments. Eventually I phoned up and was told to send some evidence, and a paper claim would be sent through the post. Thankfully this form arrived quite quickly.

According to their own website, it states that even if you are on income based ESA, you will receive these payments until your child is the age of four.

You can apply by email or phone if you’re at least 10 weeks pregnant, or have at least one child under 4 years old, and get either:

  • Income Support
  • Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
  • Pension Credit (which includes the child addition)
  • Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for the 4 weeks after you, your partner or carer start working less than 16 hours per week) and you do not get Child Tax Credit

You can also apply by email or phone if you’re at least 10 weeks pregnant and either:

  • under 18 years old and not getting any benefits
  • getting Child Tax Credit and not getting Working Tax Credit and your family’s annual income is £16,190 or less
  • getting income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

You can apply by either:

You’ll get money added onto your Healthy Start card every 4 weeks.

You’ll get:

  • £4.25 each week of your pregnancy from the 10th week
  • £8.50 each week for children from birth to 1 year old
  • £4.25 each week for children between 1 and 4 years old

Your money will stop when your child is 4 years old, or if you do not get benefits that make you eligible ,which takes you back to this original link. 

However, I since found out that if you are on income based ESA, the healthy start scheme does not continue after pregnancy because you have to be on Universal Credit. This is blackmail and discrimination.

If it clearly states on the NHS website that you can claim healthy start while on income based ESA, then this should be honoured, but instead they are blackmailing people to claim universal credit just to claim through this healthy start scheme. I got two payments, and I had to chase up the second. I complained, but nothing got done. I’m sure there are other people like me out there, so what do you think? Do you think it’s fair that you cannot claim these free vitamins and food vouchers for your child after pregnancy because you are not on a supposed ‘eligible benefit’ that their own website clearly states makes you eligible?

This is a stinking biased discriminatory system indeed.