If you need urgent help with money, food or fuel

If you need urgent help with food or money you should contact your local council first.
The help they could offer includes:

• loans or grants, such as the Scottish Welfare Fund Crisis Grant   
• food, fuel and other essentials, such as through referrals to community food organisations and food banks
• mental health and wellbeing support

Each local council has their own service and their processes might be different. You need to contact your local council to find out what support they can offer.

Some grant applications can take up to 2 days to process. If you think you’ll need help sooner than that, you should let your local council know. 

Further support

Get information about debt and money.

You can work out what benefits you could get with an online calculator. You can also get information about how benefits are paid.

Find local cash-first support

The Independent Food Aid Network have published leaflets which could help you to find local cash-first support. Cash-first means support that aims to give you shopping cards or vouchers and/or cash grants.