Birmingham advocate praises charity she’s worked at for nearly 20 years

Rose started working for POhWER in 2006, and after 18 years there is now the Head of Services for Central and North East England.

Rose says: “I never went to university but that’s not stopped me progress my career. I have completed qualifications throughout my working life and am a great believer in life long learning. My background is mainly within care, I trained as a Nursery Nurse and in Health and Social care, I have worked on wards in hospital, in private homes and in day nurseries at local hospitals.

“I then moved to work in Community Health Councils CHC) in the West Midlands, and an opportunity came up to join my local CHC in Dudley. CHCs were abolished so from there I moved to the Citizens Advice Bureau, working on the new NHS complaints advocacy service. I was part of the pilot projects that introduced the first statutory advocacy roles.

“In 2006 I moved to POhWER, as they won the tender to provide Advocacy in the West Midlands, the contract I was working on at the time.”

POhWER is the leading advocacy charity in the UK, and all the advocacy services they provide are free to access, independent, and confidential.

Their team of trained, skilled and knowledgeable advocates will provide person-centred support to people to enable them to understand and safeguard their rights, obtain information, request access to services that meet their needs and ensure that their views, wishes, and choices are represented, understood and can be acted upon.

“I have had lots of incredible experiences whilst working for POhWER experiencing different management roles in different areas and working alongside different organisations.

“I was the Team Manager in Stafford when the Francis Enquiry broke, so I worked on lots of supporting evidence provided to the Mid Staffordshire enquiry. This was a big and stressful piece of work but very valuable to have worked on this at that time to ensure the work of POhWER as a local advocacy provider and the voices of the people we worked with were represented.”

Advocates that work or volunteer for POhWER empower people to have a voice. Advocates make a real difference to their lives by speaking for them when they can’t, and supporting them to speak for themselves when they can.

“I would definitely recommend advocacy as a job, it’s so rewarding seeing the difference you can make. Often the difference you’re making isn’t for huge things, like working out how best for someone to communicate when they can’t articulate something for themselves. Or having the time to spend with people, not as a medical professional or someone from social services, but being able to meet them and support them on their level.

“You can often be trying to support someone who isn’t able to put their words forward for important decisions, so everything is about them and decision are being made for them, as an advocate you are able to ensure people are part of those conversations to make sure what they want is considered.

“There are also some very challenging aspects to advocacy. I have been supporting people who are so frustrated at the situation they’re in, they can be demanding and that can be very stressful, but being able to support that person through their frustrations and for them to be recognised as an individual and their points to be considered by professionals is the goal.”

For more information on how you could become an advocate with POhWER, visit pohwer.talaiats.com

By Sophie Berkley - Contributor