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Age UK is the new force combining Age Concern England and
Help the Aged in England.
The Social Fund provides financial help to people on a low income who need help with extra expenses. Generally, you can only apply if you receive certain benefits (including Pension Credit), but there are some exceptions.
There are different types of payments you can get from the Social Fund.
Community Care Grants help you live independently at home by paying for things like furniture, fuel connection, removal costs and minor repairs. They can also help ease exceptional family pressures caused by disability, chronic illness or major changes, and cover urgent travel expenses. You do not have to pay the money back.
Budgeting Loans help spread the cost of expensive essential items. They are between £100 and £1,500 and you will ned to repay them out of your weekly benefits.
Crisis Loans help you if you need help because of an emergency or a disaster, such as a fire or flood. You do not have to receive any benefits to apply. You will need to repay these.
Funeral Payments can help towards the cost of a funeral. Find out more in our guide When someone dies and our factsheet Planning for a funeral.
Cold Weather Payments help with extra heating costs during periods of very cold weather.
Winter Fuel Payments are paid to most pensioner households to help with the cost of fuel.
For more information, including who is eligible and how to apply, download The Social Fund factsheet (PDF 161 KB).
Download More money in your pocket: a guide to claiming benefits for people over pension age (PDF 3 MB)
Download Claiming benefits: a guide for people of working age (PDF 1 MB)
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Citizens Advice is a national network of free advice centres.
Downloads
A download is a document (like a research report, a leaflet, or an application form) that can be transferred from our website to your computer. You can download a file, view it on your screen, print it, or save it to your computer.
PDF stands for ‘portable document format’.
Most downloads on this website are PDFs. We use this format to ensure that the document looks the same on everyone’s computer (website pages, by contrast, appear differently depending on how people have set their computer up).
Computers use a program called Adobe Acrobat Reader to download PDFs. If you try clicking on a link to download a PDF and it doesn’t work, you will need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader onto your computer.
The process is quite straightforward and is free.
PDFs cannot be changed. If you need to be able to type into a downloaded document (for example, if we are offering a letter template that you need to put your name on) we will provide it as a Microsoft Word document rather than a PDF. You can then download it, type into it and save it to your computer.
Downloads will open on your computer in a new browser window.
Inside this window (below all your web browser menus), there will be a toolbar with options for you to print or save the document.
Close the browser window to return to the Age UK website.
We have made every effort to make our PDFs accessible to screen readers. Here is an overview of your accessibility options available in Acrobat Reader. Please ensure that you have downloaded the latest version of Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Reader website to ensure that they are included in your version of the programme.
You can use Adobe Reader to read a PDF out loud with the following shortcut keys:
You can also convert a PDF into a web page by following these steps:
You can convert a PDF document into a text file for use with other software and hardware such as Braille printers by opening the PDF and choosing ‘Save as text’ from the File menu.
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