Healthy Start Scheme
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of families are eligible to participate in the Healthy Start scheme.
Answered by Mrs Sharon Hodgson
We do not hold data on the proportion of families eligible to participate in the Healthy Start Scheme. As of 26 March 2026, there were 354,989 people on the digital scheme across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The data is based on individual people and is not the same as the number of families or households as there could be multiple beneficiaries living within one household.
The data includes the number of people on the digital scheme, formerly entitled beneficiaries, who have been accepted onto the scheme through an online application and issued a prepaid card at a specific point in time. This includes the number of children under the age of four years old and the number of pregnancies over ten weeks.
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