Just in time for Christmas, Dorset Community Foundation provided crisis funding to an 80 year-old partially sighted widow threatened with having her sole source of heating and cooking turned off. A grant of £500 has prevented this and enabled her to spend Christmas Day at a care home's 'Open Christmas.'

The Burns family live in a small rural area in Gateshead and all three members of the family suffer severe health problems. Ideally they need the heating on all day - something they simply cannot afford. The Surviving Winter campaign ensures thery can keep their home warmer this winter by making used of fuel efficiency measures and ensuring they claim all the benefits they are entitled to.

Vulnerable elderly people are being forced to turn off their heating and suffer bitterly cold temperatures in their homes due to the rising cost of fuel. Pauline Scrace from Kent suffers from bone disease osteoporosis and, despite the cold weather making her symptoms worse, has to turn her heating off due to rising bills. “I really struggle in the winter. I have my heating on from about 5pm to 9pm. I try and cut down my food bills so I can keep the heating on for a bit longer.”

Norfolk pensioners Geoffrey and Phyllis Spinks receive a grant towards the cost of heating oil - just one of the thousands of grants that have been made to some of the UK's neediest older people, as money floods in to our appeal. The couple, whose home has no mains gas, are at the mercy of rising oil prices, and bills have increased more than threefold in the last four years, while their Winter Fuel Payment has been reduced.