Senior Development Manager, Vicky Morgan, joined a panel with City St George’s, University of London in April, sharing Better Start’s approach to increasing Healthy Start uptake in Blackpool. Locally, we increased the uptake rate by 10% and were one of the highest areas of uptake nationally. We did this by working through and building on existing early years systems (health, family hubs, community) alongside our peer led community connectors breaking down barriers relating to message sharing, myth busting, application accessibility and usage. We also used data at ward level to target areas of lower uptake and it was positive to hear steps are in place to reintroduce this detail to local authorities.
Despite these efforts we know uptake needs to improve, at the start of this work we calculated an estimated loss of around £200k per year to families and the local economy.
Alongside other areas of good practice we are confident some changes can improve this.
- Support to local areas to imbed roles such as community connectors to ease pressures from already stretched systems whilst influencing advocacy through trusted peer approaches
- Provide local areas with regular and accurate ward level data to maximise opportunities to focus resources in areas that need it.
- Reduce or remove barriers to applying for the scheme including auto enrolment and sophisticated IT systems that passport eligibility from existing benefits.
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