I came across Turn2Us  via the Paul Lewis Money blog (http://paullewismoney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/hardship-grants-available.html) where there is an excellent overview of the service. Turn2Us is part of the Elizabeth Finn Care charity. As well as providing a useful benefits search tool there is a searchable database of over 3000 charities that distribute £288 million in grants to individuals in financial hardship every year. To find potential sources of grants in your location type in your postcode, gender and age. Some of the charities only provide grants for people who have worked for a particular company or in a particular industry, but there are many that offer support to the general population and can help with education costs, living costs or hardship in retirement.

When I typed in my postcode (Reading), age and gender it came up with a list of 72 charities. There were some that were bizarre in their specificity. The Edmund Godson Charity, for example, offers “one-off grants for people in need who wish to emigrate and who currently live in and around Woolwich, Shinfield near Reading, north east Herefordshire and Tenbury in Worcestershire”. I was also intrigued by one that provides grants and annuities for “older women in the UK who are not ‘of the artisan class'”, and was left wondering whether I would qualify.

Those idiosyncrasies aside, there is a wide range of help available here from charities that are little known and not easy to find.