About 550,000 mothers who are pregnant or have children aged three and under are theoretically eligible for the program, which costs between, 4.25 and, 8.50 a week. Designed to ensure that their children get their portions five a day, milk or formula, it should be a timely boost. Instead of providing a food safety net, however, Healthy Start withdrew tens of thousands of eligible mothers. As he moved from the paper voucher to a prepaid card system, the parents who used the old system were rejected for the new one, without any explanation. Some’s due to months of delays. The chaos appears to have been news to the authors of the long-awaited White Paper on Government Food Strategy, according to a version leaked on Friday. “We have made it easier for new families to apply and use the Healthy Start Program through digitization,” the newspaper proudly insisted. Many parents who logged in found that they could not activate their new card or that they were eventually rejected. Some callers to the customer service line waited three hours – and those who did not participate in telephone payment plans were charged 55p per minute. A plaintiff was told by a customer service consultant to get her baby formula from a food bank. Even those who received the card found that they could not be used to buy food online and in some stores could not be used as a partial payment – to their shame and embarrassment users would find that they had to separate Healthy Start products at the counter. In March, charities and public health officials wrote to Health Secretary Sajid Javid, warning that problems with Healthy Start were so widespread and technical support so inadequate that they were reluctant to promote the program locally “for fear that eligible residents are eliminated from the defective system “. To an outraged local official, the catastrophe had the hallmarks of a classic public sector digital breach: pushing for a non-user-friendly system with minimal consultation and ignoring issues when identified. It had the repercussions of the free school meal voucher fiasco and the early days of universal credit. “If you were trying to minimize the cost of fruit and vegetables, that’s exactly how you would plan it,” he said. The NHS Business Services Authority acknowledges that “there were some issues” with switching to digital Healthy Start. Since March, the capacity of the helpline has increased and some IT glitches have been fixed. Refunds were promised to eligible mothers who were rejected for the card who can prove they tried to file a claim. However, many users report that the problems persist. A recent case seen by the Guardian involved a distressed mother who was forced to borrow cash from her family to buy milk for her baby. She had no explanation as to why her application was rejected or how and when she could receive a refund. Healthy Start’s problems have drawn attention to its wider shortcomings. The Independent National Food Strategy last year noted that at least 250,000 children under the age of five with food insecurity were not eligible for the program. He asked to be extended to all households earning less than 20 20,000 and to all children under the age of five. This would bring an additional 600,000 pregnant women and children to the program. The absorption of the regime, however, remains stubbornly low. The latest national figures indicate that only 63% of eligible parents acquired their entitlement last year and more than εκατο 63 million in coupons were not requested. The government’s sophisticated food strategy is clear that there are no plans to expand Healthy Start or invest in a marketing boost that many believe is needed to significantly increase absorption. At the local level, there is concern that the difficult application process and operational difficulties not only exclude but alienate parents and children themselves who desperately need support. “The real fear is that they have fallen off the edge of the cliff,” said one official.
