Child Poverty and Health - Market Engagement

Background

Child poverty in the UK has increased by 900,000 children since 2010/11. 4.5 million children now live in poverty and 1.1 million have used foodbanks within the last 12 months.

Tackling child poverty is central to this government’s mission to remove barriers to opportunity and raise the healthiest generation of children ever. On 5th December 2025, the government published Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696646bc99fbdc… ↗ which sets out immediate actions to reduce poverty and the long‑term foundations needed to change its trajectory. As part of the Strategy, DHSC has committed to engage with the market and wider stakeholders outside of government to better understand and explore potential opportunities for collaboration to address the health impacts of child poverty.

Purpose

The purpose of this notice is to announce that DHSC will be hosting a virtual roundtable event with a Q&A on 15th April 2026. Please see the letter from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care inviting industry to the virtual roundtable: atamis-1928.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/0O000000rwim/a… ↗ The roundtable will involve a facilitated discussion on what organisations are doing, or interested in doing, to tackle the health impacts of child poverty. In the event that that there are a significant number of organisations that meet the eligibility criterion for the event, DHSC reserves the right to run more than one virtual event.

There is no planned procurement activity relating to the publication of this preliminary market engagement notice. For avoidance of doubt this is not a call for competition nor a procurement and therefore it will have a monetary payment value of £0 attached. The sole purpose of the engagement is to initiate a discussion with suppliers interested in addressing the health impacts of child poverty.

Eligibility

To be eligible to attend this event you must be a VCSE or private sector organisation interested in improving health outcomes for children in poverty. If the roundtable is significantly oversubscribed, DHSC reserves the right to run more than one virtual event dictated by organisation type / interest area.

Questionnaire

To participate in this roundtable, we ask any party linked to or interested in child poverty to complete a short questionnaire about what they feel are potential areas of opportunities for collaboration, as well as any work they have underway to improve health outcomes for children in poverty. This questionnaire is for information purposes only and will not form part of the assessment of those organisations that DHSC may collaborate with. Please complete the questionnaire at this link: forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx ↗ The deadline to complete the questionnaire is 1700 on Thursday 9th April 2026.

If you have any challenges in registering for the event or specific questions around the market engagement, please contact [email protected]

Following this market consultation, should any opportunities for collaboration arise, DHSC will ensure these are advertised openly for all interested organisations.

All responses will be stored securely by DHSC and kept only for as long as is strictly necessary. You can read more at this link: www.gov.uk/government/publicati… ↗ During the analysis DHSC may use its own artificial intelligence tools to help analyse responses. No external Artificial Intelligence tools will be used. No raw data will be shared outside of DHSC, NHS England or uploaded to external tools.

Artificial Intelligence will not be relied upon in isolation; it will only be used as a supplement to manual analysis in the context of the holistic findings.