Crisis grants

We manage crisis grants from the Scottish Welfare Fund that can help if you have an emergency or disaster and need to pay for short-term living costs.

A crisis grant would be used to avoid serious damage or a serious risk to the health and safety of you or your family. Crisis grants are intended to meet one-off needs and can't provide an alternative source of regular income.

A crisis grant may help if:

  • you're facing a disaster (like a fire or flood)
  • you're facing an emergency (like an unexpected expense you hadn't budgeted for or being stranded away from home without any way to get back)
  • you need help with costs that have arisen as a result of the disaster or emergency to keep you and your family safe from harm

The help you may receive will depend on the difficulties you're facing and the likely impact to you or your family. You may get money or another form of support such as a voucher, fuel card or furniture.

You must be aged 16 or over, in receipt of a low income or benefits and not have access to any other appropriate source of financial help.

How to apply

You must be aged 16 or over, on a low income or receiving benefits and not have access to any other sources of financial help.

Check eligibility and apply online

We aim to process your application and contact you with a decision within 1 working day. 

You'll need to provide:

  • your name
  • your address (if you have one)
  • a way to contact you
  • some details about your situation (including how you found yourself in crisis)

If you can't  apply online then there are some other options:

We aim to contact you within 1 working day so that we can help complete your application, this may take longer depending on demand. Callbacks will come from an unknown number and will only be attempted once following your request. Your request will be closed if we can't reach you, you can submit another request but will go to the back of the queue.

We aim to process your application within a further 1 working day after we receive it.

Unhappy with our decision

We have a review process if you're not happy with the decision about your application.

Page last updated: 13/10/2021
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