How a data led approach has boosted take up of Healthy Start across three London boroughs

Over 250,000 children live in food insecurity in London.

Healthy Start, created in 2006, helps pregnant women and families with children under four access fresh fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula. However, each year, low income Londoners miss out on £9.9 million in support due to low awareness of the scheme and its complex application process.

The Greater London Authority’s Equality and Fairness team partnered with Policy in Practice and three London authorities in the first digital take up campaign to use data analytics to help London families experiencing food insecurity and financial hardship.

The campaign’s goal was to increase Healthy Start take up and test the ability to send text messages for benefit take up campaigns while developing a campaign tool for local authorities to use for cost and resource effective data led campaigns. This is the first major Healthy Start take up campaign to use both digital and paper communications.

This campaign demonstrates the power of proactive use of administrative data, setting the standard for regional take up campaigns.

Across the period of this campaign take up of Healthy Start grew by 5.4% on average in participating boroughs compared to a 0.7% decrease in other boroughs over the same period

Even in participating boroughs, a traditional campaign, running for 12 months by letter, led to a 1% take up rate. This data is not detailed at the individual level so we cannot conclusively say that all of this take up was due to this campaign, however, the difference between participating pilot boroughs and non-participating boroughs is clear.

For every £1 spent on the text and letter campaign, £11 in income was generated for Londoners. For a text only campaign, the return rose to £131 for every £1 spent

In its first year, the campaign will deliver £30,800 to 274 households. If residents continue to claim Healthy Start until their child turns four, they will receive over £106,000 in support.

The real life impacts of the campaign cannot be overstated. Two residents shared the difference this campaign made to them, below.

This report shows the impact of the Healthy Start take up campaign, shares feedback from the councils and residents and outlines the methodology for future regional level campaigns.