Financial support when waiting for first UC payment

We’ve just started with UC. A client had applied for UC in another area where she had been staying with friends. When she could stay there no longer then moved into the area and found a private rent- unfurnished with utilities on key meters.
She had a short term benefit advance of around £128 some 4 weeks before presenting with no money, no food, no utilities.
Payment of UC was not due for another 2 weeks. She had been told she could only have one short term benefit advance.
She had already made an application for a DHP and was waiting for a response.
We could have given her a food parcel but she had no means of cooking.
Our local emergency transition support said she was ineligible for support as she was not vulnerable!

Anyone else experienced a similar situation? Anything else we could have done?

Have you tried Crises Fund provided from your local council?

Not got direct experience of advising people in this situation yet, but I believe this is generally the situation with UC.  Your scenario suggests that your client got her UC Advance early in the process after making her claim for UC, so she must already have been in hardship which is why it is impossible for her to make that money last 6 weeks.
You mention local support has been approached, did you mean the council’s Local Assistance scheme?  There is no absolute requirement for people to be vulnerable to access help, you could try challenging them, there is info on the CPAG website on this.
Also CPAG say this about whether or not you can have only one UC Advance:

In the case of Advances on either benefit transfer or new claim, DWP guidance is that you can only get one Advance. The situation is different for Advances on changes of circumstance: in the (fairly unlikely) event that you have 2 or more different changes of circumstance during the same assessment month, you could get 2 or more different UC Advances for change of circumstance.12
CPAG believes the guidance on benefit transfer and new claim Advances is too restrictive: the Payment on Account Regs are silent about the limits to how many Universal Credit Advances you can get during the same assessment month.13

Link to the CPAG information that Sarah references, with footnotes to guidance etc (scroll down to ‘Can you get more than one UC Advance?’)

Universal Credit Advances

Thanks all for the replies - most helpful.