2ndApril 2012
Information for Pharmacies
Guide to NHS East London and City (City and Hackney) A Healthy Start for Allscheme: vitamins for pregnant, postnatal and breastfeeding women and children up to four years old
In order to improve the health of children and families in Hackney and the City and to address concerns about vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency in Hackney’s population, NHS East London and City (City and Hackney) Public Health Department and the London Borough of Hackney are launching the A Healthy Start for Allscheme. This scheme builds upon the means-tested Healthy Start government scheme which offers free vitamin drops (for children), vitamin tablets (for women) and food vouchers for families in receipt of some benefits.Our local scheme will offer free Healthy Start vitamins to ALL in the following eligible groups:
- Pregnant women
- Women who have had a baby in the last year
- Children under four years old (e.g. up to their fourth birthday). Please note that breastfed babies are eligible from birth; babies fed on formula do not need supplementation until they are six months old.
Vitamins drops and tablets are supplied in bottles each containing enough for eight weeks. Vitamins are approved by the Vegetarian Society.
Contents / Women’s tablets (per daily dose) / Children’s drops (per daily dose)Folic Acid / 400 micrograms / none
Vitamin A / none / 233 micrograms
Vitamin C / 70 milligrams / 20 milligrams
Vitamin D3 / 10 micrograms (≈ 400 iu) / 7.5 micrograms (≈ 300 iu)
How the scheme works:
Healthy Start vitamins will be distributed through all community pharmacies in Hackney. NHS ELC (City and Hackney) Public Health Department is ordering sufficient vitamins to reach 90% of all pregnant women and 30% of all postnatal women and children up to four years old. The vitamin tablets will be delivered to each pharmacy in one annual delivery (delivered w/c 26th March 2012); the drops will be delivered quarterly (1st delivery w/c 26th March 2012, other dates to be agreed).
A Healthy Start for Allleaflets and posters are being distributed to health care professionals, health premises, children centres,local authority services and other places used by local families. In addition, the scheme is being publicised via Hackney Today which is delivered to every home in Hackney (an estimated 98,000 homes). Flyers will be included in each copy distributed during the week commencing 2nd April 2012. Pharmacies will also receive a window sticker to publicise the fact that they are supplying A Healthy Start for Allvitamins.
Registration forms (electronic and paper copies) will be made available to midwives, GPs, health visitors, pharmacists, community paediatriciansand dieticians. At first presentation, parents/carers should bring a completed form to the pharmacy. We do not need you to keep copies of the forms so they can be shredded/placed in confidential waste after use. Parent/carer and child/children’sdetails should be logged on SONAR as a record; subsequent collections(every eight weeks) can then be recorded in the system. Where children but no adults in the family are eligible (e.g. where the youngest child is over one year old and the mother is not pregnant) the parent should still be registered as a link to the child. SONAR will automatically calculate when eligibility has ended. Where a pregnant woman is registered, her baby can be added to SONAR once born.
Parents/carers can also request that the pharmacy register them on the A Healthy Start for Allscheme without a registration form; in this case they will be registered on SONAR using their GP practice name, given their first vitamins and a form and asked to come back with their/their child’s NHS number when they need further supplies.
SONAR prompts to ask parents/carers whether they receive Healthy Start food vouchers. We need to know who is eligible for the national Healthy Start scheme in order to reclaim money from the Department of Health. We do not need you to collect the paper vouchers. If families are eligible for the national scheme but are not claiming, please provide them with a registration form (included in your welcome pack).
This scheme offers an opportunity to raise a number of important issues around maternal and child health so we ask that you discuss issues such as access to maternity services, breastfeeding, healthy nutrition and immunisation and refer to relevant services when appropriate. SONAR will prompt you to ask about childhood immunisations where a child is of an age where they are due to receive immunisation.
Healthy Start vitamins can be sold over the counter to anyone who is not eligible for the scheme, e.g. women who are intending to get pregnant, children of four years and over and adults referred by primary care. Current retail prices are: drops: £1.80 per bottle; tablets: £0.91 per bottle.[1]If you do sell the vitamins we ask that you replenish any stock used in this way by ordering directly from NHS Supply Chain. The contact details are: Our local sales representative is Robert Anderson. His contact details are
- Tel: 07917 307297
- Email: .
SONAR will automatically generate an invoice for £100 once you have distributed 100 bottles of drops/tablets. A further £100 invoice will be generated when you have distributed a further 100 bottles.
If you require any additional information/support you can contact
- Sarah Rees, Public Health Strategist, Tel: 020 7683 4557 or
- Suman Barhaya, Specialist Pharmacy Lead, Tel: 020 7683 4007 or
[1] - shows current retail prices for Healthy Start vitamins.