Jason Andrews is a Forensic Advocacy Manager at a secure hospital in Berkshire, and he wants to promote advocacy as a career.

Jason has worked for POhWER over the last year since we took over the contract at the secure hospital he works at. Jason wants people who may never have thought of advocacy as a career to think again, and shares how he started working in this sector.

Jason says: “I have been an advocate for 16 years. Before that I was running pubs and bars, I had some mental health difficulties and an advocate had helped me through this. When my eldest son was born I wanted to move away from the 24/7 job I was in with the pub and also wanted to give something back as someone had helped me."

“I started working as a mental health support worker in the community. I helped a resident who had schizophrenia whose doctor was going to take away his motorcycle license. I disagreed with this and I helped to fight for him to keep his license. My boss at the time said that was a great piece of advocacy, which led me to being an advocate."

“I started as an advocate one day a week and then this quickly led to full time, I went to be a Supervising Advocate and for the last four years I’ve been a Forensic Advocacy Manager.”

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

Our 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.

Jason's work focuses on collective trends and themes throughout the secure hospital and the issues the staff receive from patients to see how they can resolve these quickly.

Having worked at this setting for 16 years, Jason speaks about why he has stayed in this sector and how important the work is. “I would definitely recommend advocacy as a career, it is so fulfilling. I often speak to people who have left the profession and they often say they miss it. 

“At times it can be difficult, but the tiny differences that you can make to a person can have such an impact on an individual’s life, and seeing that is fantastic."

“We often see people coming into hospital who are unwell but seeing them leave doing so well is brilliant and going through that journey with someone and being part of that is nice.”

Jason didn’t have any qualifications or specific training before starting work as an advocate. Jason says: “You don’t need qualifications to become an advocate, the work you do face to face with service users is the best training you’re going to get."

“Often an advocate is a people person, so working with people in settings feels more natural than learning about the work in a classroom. The life experience that advocates have make a person in this role, I think that people are born advocates. The worst thing we do is not advocate for ourselves, we always have a sense of right and wrong and that’s what we bring to these roles.”

For more information on how you could become an advocate with POhWER, please our Current Vacancies page.