POhWER provides free, confidential, and independent advocacy to users of social care and community services across Hertfordshire. They work in partnership with organisations across the county to deliver advocacy to support those seldom heard, their families and carers.
POhWER will work with formal partners:
- Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD) who specialise in advocacy and support for the d/Deaf community
- Herts Viewpoint who specialises in support for people with experience of mental health issues. They will deliver Community Mental Health Advocacy.
- Health & Independent Living Support (HILS) who specialise in advocacy and support for older people
As well as a network of local specialist providers to ensure people are provided with the support they need, in a way that suits them.
Services:
POhWER provide the following services in Hertfordshire in partnership with the above organisations:
- Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA)
- Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy (IMCA) including Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), Relevant Person’s Paid Representative (RPPR),
- Litigation Friend and Rule 1.2 Representative.
- Independent Care Act Advocacy (ICAA)
- Independent Health Complaints Advocacy (IHCA)
- Community Advocacy and Community Mental Health Advocacy (CMHA) – available to adults over 18 that ordinarily reside in Herts and are registered with a GP. This includes prisoners, people living in residential/nursing care within Herts, and people in hospital and rehabilitation units.
- Group Advocacy, Peer Advocacy, and Advocacy delivered by Experts by Experience
- Co-production
Group Advocacy
POhWER will deliver self-advocacy training to advocacy providers and groups across the county to enable them to run regular Group Advocacy sessions to empower Hertfordshire residents to work together, develop self-advocacy skills, and feed any issues, concerns, or ideas for improvement into the Advocacy Network that in turn can be highlighted to the Co-production Group.
If your group is interested in receiving this training, please email: hertsadvocacy@pohwer.net
Contact and Referrals:
You can access referral forms and download leaflets here: https://www.pohwer.net/hertfordshire
Or contact their Help Hub:
Email: hertsadvocacy@pohwer.net
Telephone: 0300 456 2370 (charged at your standard network rate)
Speech to Text via Relay UK: www.relayuk.bt.com
Text: send the word ’pohwer’ with your name and number to 81025
Post: PO Box 17943, Birmingham, B9 9PB
For advocacy support for people who are d/Deaf, deafened, or hard or hearing including support in BSL please contact Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD):
Online referral: https://royaldeaf.org.uk/make-a-referral/
Send a BSL video or email to: advocacy@royaldeaf.org.uk
Text SMS: 07851 423866
Telephone: 0300 688 2525