Projects & Partnerships 4 December 2023
Healthy Start
Working in partnership we hope to boost take-up of Healthy Start.
London Citizens Advice are working with food partnerships across London to increase the take up of Healthy Start in their communities - Healthy Start is an NHS scheme that helps women who are pregnant or have young children and are receiving benefits, buy foods such as milk or fruit.
This is part of a training and campaigns initiative with the GLA's Food Roots programme - a Pan-London initiative to develop partnerships between local authorities, civil society organisations and businesses to embed sustainable and resilient delivery approaches in tackling food insecurity within communities. The partnerships include
Bexley Voluntary Services Council
Greenwich Community Development Agency
Kensington & Chelsea Social Council
The partnership work will aim to raise uptake of Healthy Start across London by
- Increasing awareness and visibility of Healthy Start across food partnerships and Londoners who use their services, including newly trained staff and volunteers who can signpost and support applications and facilitate better links between statutory and voluntary sector work on Healthy Start.
- Developing and delivering a training programme which supports grantee partnerships and their member organisations to increase Healthy Start uptake among the communities they support.
- Providing support to partnerships to maximise the impact of their newly trained staff and volunteers by working with the local authority, statutory services and other existing schemes to run a local uptake campaigns.
- Establishing with Food Roots partners an appropriate and effective way to measure the impact of the training and campaigns
The Healthy Start training project is being led by Citizens Advice Southwark supported by other local Citizens Advice and links closely to our Advice First Aid programme.