POhWER Reviews 

I was told by SHELTER to call them and ask for advocacy for vulnerable people.
I did and the answer was : no we don't do community advocacy and that was that!
What do they do then if they don't help vulnerable people?

they wrote to wrong name, wrong email address, although call handler had promised advocate would phone rather than email as I am in stroke recovery

i thing avcac are very good and always help you with your poblems. and always help with ward rounds.

Terrible and you have people who do not represent the True meaning of Pohwer

​I am thoroughly disgusted by POhWER Advocacy.
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They suffer from severe selective hearing loss—meaning they only hear what they want to hear. and only hear They want to hear for themselves only, every single situation can ONLY ever be a "complaint." They refuse to accept, understand, or even begin to comprehend that an issue could be far deeper or go way beyond a basic, bog-standard complaint to them.
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It is entirely their own of doing things or not at all. They force people into a two-faced process controlled by biased, automated, rigid scripts and rigid dialogues. Their own staff are reading from pre-written scripts and following rigid procedures—this is what they are doing, what they will do, and what they continue to do to those who come to them. They simply do not want to know any other narrative to what they are doing. Everything must strictly be on their terms and under their conditions of a "complaint"—and that is the only narrative they will accept, completely refusing to see a situation for what it actually is when it isn't just a basic complaint.
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To make matters worse, in the second half of this year, they have started including requests for donations in their written correspondence. POhWER is an established, legally registered charity with full contract funding already secured to operate for the coming year. They have absolutely no right to ask for donations from anyone who uses, is referred to, is pushed to by other services, or is asked to interact with their own services to them for doing so. It is absolutely disgusting to target people passed to them by other agencies for money when they already have secure funding and refuse to engage with what is actually going on.
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An advocacy organization is meant to fight for people and give them a voice, not push rigid scripts and procedures, ignore real problems, and ask for donations from the people they have let down, continue to let down, and will let down.

And are more bothered about wanting to close you down or close the case down that was referred or pushed or made to interact with them after so many weeks or months , if they cannot and do not get their own way with you for it , being a complaint to them by other services who are also playing Along with this game to themselves to them who do referred you to them by Telling them Behind your own back to them unknowns to you it can only be a Bulk standard complaint knowing to you to them in the first place to them at POhWER who are a corrupt naive and spiteful company of Thairs to You who have no rights to be clearly operating as a service to the Community in this way to others.

​Please note I have used speech-to-text software to put this review together and post it onto the Trustpilot platform for others to read, due to having dyslexia and dyspraxia, and struggling with text to colors on all background monitor screens across all devices and platforms.

I do not know what I would have done without PALS help they have done so much to help, Raquel is 100% professional very kind thoughtful and so helpful huge thanks to Raquel

13th July Utterly unimpressed. My family tried community advocacy via email and asked for information on what we might be entitled to, and also for support with various medical issues (or to be passed on to someone else at Pohwer who could help). For each query we were just told go and try another organisation/we don't deal with that. So we tried asking what CAN you do to help then? And got no reply at all, which is both rude and unprofessional.

Advocacy is supposed to be about being a voice for someone, supporting and representing, possibly arguing on behalf of. If all they can do is send you a bunch of links (that we had already tried) then they should not be calling themselves an advocacy service and should rebrand to a resources hub or something.

To add insult to injury, the person we dealt with (Martha) could not even get my name right despite it being at the end of every email. It's four letters long!!! Don't bother contacting the community advocacy team if you are in East Herts, you will just waste your time and raise your stress levels.

Edit 30th: 0 stars for Martha, 5 for the very nice Lisette who called today, so I have changed overall rating to 3. Lisette explained clearly what they can and can't do and why (mainly, can help with supporting specific complaints) and gave me her number for if we can't get any satisfaction from the NHS. Also very sympathetic to our situation. So I guess it will depend on the person who contacts you, good luck and hope you find a good one!

I contacted POhWER as a vulnerable adult left completely without care. My local advocacy provider has failed, and I was advised to seek a spot‑purchase from a national organisation.

I received a brief response from Mona (POhWER Hub Advisor) stating that POhWER would not take on my case because I am 'out of area.' No consideration was given to the safeguarding implications, my vulnerability, or the seriousness of my situation.

The reply offered no advice, no signposting, and no acknowledgement of risk. It felt like a template rejection rather than a professional assessment of a vulnerable adult’s needs.

POhWER are registered with the Fundraising Regulator, yet their public reviews and lack of engagement show a pattern of not listening or learning from vulnerable people’s experiences.

I have reported this refusal to Trafford Council and the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman.

Vulnerable adults deserve proper consideration — not a one‑line dismissal.

Your site is corrupted you are really NCC aren’t you
You are in the NNC COMMAND CLUB :-
Consumer Protection (Nottingham &Nottinghamshire)
Nottingham police
Highways maintenance group
Ect ,ect,ect about 168 different companies owned by NCC

Becky who been dealing with my case has been so helpful in this process put my mind to ease on question or anything I ask she a credit to your team thank you

spent twice talking to someone who then put me on hold without warning and the call got disconnec5ed but they didnt Bother to call back.
If they cant be bothered to 'LISTEN' to someone they need to get another job. RUDE AND UNPROFESSIONAL.
I will be doing this myself now which I can absolutely do but as a full time carer would have liked some assistance.

Really useful and practical help, information and support.

One of the members of staff of Pohwer, Bijal Sheraji, was so helpful, positive, empathic, supportive, and created a very warm and welcoming friendly atmosphere, which is why I am giving such a positive review for Pohwer. A huge thank you too Bijal for such a positive, welcoming and supportive experience. Thank you so much. It's amazing that Advocacy organisations like Pohwer exist.

I shouldn't be surprised. People are people and for some reason an advocate is needed to get advocacy.

Pohwer Hertfordshire: Namely Edna. Condescending , combative , dismissive, coercive gaslighting of the vulnerable including children and adults.
Someone is a position of trust withholding support.
I have a few issues that seemed to cross over leading me to be overwhelmed. Edna would interrupt me constantly while I was trying to illustrate how the issues developed , but at the same time apologising for doing so continued. When expressing the educational needs of children she stated that all children must be in school, how draconian and dark. Access to education does not mean access to school.
What was most concerning was when I said that I would have to leave the call. Edna didn't like that, so I was bombarded then with, ' but what about your issues'. The same issues you keep preventing me from speaking about . This is the kicker.
Me:I am going to have to end the call.
Edna:Why?
Me:because I feel that I need to leave this conversation.
Imagine she didn't want me to go..
Edna:So you want me to close the case?
Me:I have stated that I feel I need to end this call, and you have paraphrased for me to have the case closed.
If that is what you heard and comprehended from the words I have spoken then it is in your professional capacity to decide once the phone is down what you will do.
To date Edna has not called back so I guess the case is shut.
I also feel that I must take this to the MPs.
Self referrals are treated like an inconvenience. So why have them so as to give a notion that there is equal opportunities and accessibility.
Edna should be ashamed of herself.
And Pohwer needs a heavy audit just like the Ombudsman service

People who approach these services are not here for fun, we aren't flicking through a page of a book and having a aha moment. Finding and approaching Pohwer is intentional and therefore every individual where thrid party referral or self should be treated as vulnerable as they are seeking help. They should not be spoken to with impersonal , harsh criticism and when making a decision not to further their own discomfort and actual extension of their concerns. Be met with..
If you don't put up with this then I won't help you.
Honestly my stomach turns for anyone that has to cross paths..

Someone from the POHWER service in Leicester turned up at my property without notice and with someone from the service that I needed help communicating with. I obviously couldn't speak to the POHWER advocate in front of the person from the service that I needed help communicating with, so I ended up closing the door on both of them. So sad that POHWER is a letdown for so many people.

EDIT: Complain against this sham charity to the charity commision. This is the only way to have scam charities like Powher closed down.
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Absolutely useless.
They never answer the phone, never call back.
Only contact I managed to get was via email
Emails were written poorly regarding spelling and grammar, and after apparantly reading the notes, they had no understanding whatsoever of the complaint.
So their response then is to direct me to the PHSO. But, PHSO won't touch it until I've made a complaint in the first instance!
I honestly don't know how or why they exist, complete amateurs with no expertise.

It took this advocacy service 3 months to call me and the advocate provided to me sent emails to an incorrect email address because she didn’t check it, neither did she check to see if the email had bounced back into her inbox. So she sent an emailed to an address that doesn’t exist. Didn’t think to call me either then when she finally sorted herself out after 5 calls chasing her up. She emailed me instructions of what to do and also that due to time delays, caused by her they may have now closed the complaint. Meaning I cannot now pursue it.
This is all down to their mismanagement and bad service

Extremely poor. Dismissive. Didn’t listen. Talked over me. Didn’t acknowledge mistakes. Refused to pass on concerns to a supervisor when asked- demanded I call a ‘hub’. Gave no information about what the number of the hub is.
Appalling treatment of a child with significant disabilities.
Would give zero stars if possible

I am alone with stage 4 cancer . I contacted this company for help and have had nothing but rude 1 lines saying to go somewhere else. Signposted. Rude. Unhelpful.

If zero stars were an option, that’s what this experience would merit.

This review follows a formal complaint I made about POhWER’s handling of advocacy support for my brother, a vulnerable adult.

After meeting with a POhWER advocate, providing detailed information, and completing all onboarding paperwork, my brother and I were left with a clear and reasonable understanding that POhWER would act as his advocate during an upcoming reassessment. At no point was it explained that this might fall outside remit, or that a different category of advocacy might be required.
When we were later told that POhWER could not support him in that reassessment, the withdrawal came as a shock and caused significant distress. I explicitly raised concerns at the time about the emotional impact this would have on my brother, who had only just begun to trust that an independent advocate would support him. I also made clear that I am not a professional advocate and could not be expected to understand technical distinctions between different advocacy frameworks — that responsibility sits with the organisation.
In October 2025, POhWER upheld my formal complaint, acknowledging that the distinction between Community Advocacy and Care Act advocacy had not been made clear and that this had caused distress.
Two specific outcomes were agreed:
• A seamless and immediate handover to the commissioned Care Act advocacy provider, including contacting the allocated social worker to flag the need for Care Act advocacy (subject to consent)
• A personal explanation and apology directly to my brother
Despite the complaint being upheld, these outcomes were not implemented.
After repeated follow-up, POhWER confirmed that the case had been closed without contacting the social worker and without carrying out the agreed facilitative handover. Responsibility was later reframed as sitting entirely with us, despite the clear wording of the upheld outcome.
As a result, the process stalled for months at a critical point in my brother’s care. We were eventually forced to initiate the next steps ourselves to secure advocacy support — something that should not have been necessary given the upheld complaint and agreed actions.
The personal explanation and apology to my brother also never took place. A written apology contained within a complaint response addressed to me was treated as sufficient, despite the outcome explicitly stating that my brother should receive a personal explanation.
This experience has been exhausting and distressing, and it has undermined confidence both in POhWER’s complaints process and in the advocacy service it claims to offer. While complaints may be upheld in principle, the lack of follow-through raises serious concerns about accountability and real-world support for vulnerable people.