Health: Children
(asked on 23rd April 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the impact of childhood poverty on longitudinal health outcomes.
The Department delivers programmes to support the most vulnerable children and families, and reduce health inequalities. The Government published the Best Start for Life: A Vision for the 1,001 Critical Days, in March 2021. This sets out six action areas for improving support for families during the 1,001 critical days, to ensure every baby in England is given the best possible start in life, regardless of background.
The Government is investing an additional £300 million to improve support for families though the joint Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Education Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. It is implementing many elements of the Best Start for Life Vision, delivering a step change in outcomes for babies, children, and their parents and carers in 75 local authorities in England, including those with high levels of deprivation. The Government has commissioned two in-depth independent evaluations of the programme.
The Healthy Start scheme helps to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies, and young children aged under four years old from very low-income households. The latest Healthy Start data was published on 28 March 2024, with an uptake of 66%. Healthy Start now supports approximately 366,000 beneficiaries.
In November 2022, NHS England published Core20PLUS5, an approach to reducing health inequalities for children and young people at both a national and system level. The approach defines a target population cohort, and identifies five clinical areas requiring accelerated improvement, which are asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, oral health, and mental health. Where possible, indicators in the Child and Maternal Health Profile provide a breakdown by the index of multiple deprivation, which is available at the following link: