Human Rights in Healthcare - public sector

‘It is my aspiration that health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for’
United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan

From 2006 we have been working with the Department of Health and a number of NHS Trusts on a project to support the use of human rights based approaches in improving health and social care. This work is now being led by Mersey Care, one of the original partners in the project, and BIHR is closely involved as consultants to the work they are doing.

The main activities and outputs of BIHR's earlier work in the public sector work are:

‘Human Rights in Healthcare - A Framework for Local Action' - Second Edition.
This is a practical guide to assist people working in NHS organisations to develop and use human rights to support their core business of planning and delivering high quality healthcare for all. It is relevant for a broad range of people who make up NHS organisations, but is primarily targeted at decision makers and those with responsibility for taking forward human rights and linked projects.

‘Human Rights in Healthcare - A short introduction'
This is a booklet providing a simple introduction to human rights in healthcare. It is primarily aimed at frontline staff, including clinicians and support and administrative staff. It is also a useful introduction for directors, board members, managers and policy staff.

Trust pilot projects

There are five NHS Trusts involved in the human rights in healthcare project:

• Mersey Care NHS Trust
• Heart of Birmingham Teaching PCT
• Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Trust
• Southwark Health and Social Care
• Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Trust
   

Each Trust has previously produced one or more human rights products that are available to other NHS organisations such as training modules, questionnaires and assessments. These are available from the Department of Health's website.

Mersey Care NHS Trust's 'Standing up for my rights group'
Photo Courtesy of Mersey Care NHS Trust

Learning events
A series of national learning events have been run throughout the project in order to raise awareness amongst a wider group of stakeholders of the relevance of human rights based approaches to health and social care, and to share learning from the project.

• Human rights, equality and healthcare (21 April 2008, Liverpool, download the report)
• Human rights learning and development (20 May 2008, Birmingham, download the report)
• Human rights and commissioning (17 July 2008, London, download the report)
• Human rights and health and social care (26th January 2010, London, download the report)
• Human Rights in Healthcare - the practice (5th July 2010, London, download the report)

Independent evaluation

‘[a human rights based approach] goes above and beyond good practice in providing renewed quality of care for service users, and staff are empowered to challenge care decisions.' (Human rights in healthcare evaluation, Ipsos Mori 2008, p.34)

Ipsos Mori have carried out an Independent evaluation of the five NHS Trusts' pilot human rights projects. Their final evaluation report will be available shortly. Download the 2008 interim evaluation report.

For more information about the human rights in healthcare project please contact Ellie Keen on ekeen@bihr.org.uk.

BIHR provides training on human rights and healthcare. Find out more >>

Human Rights in Healthcare - voluntary sector

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25.1

About the project 

Voluntary sector organisations are increasingly playing an important role in health and social care – both as providers of services, and as advocates and campaigners on behalf of those in need of better care. However, not all of them are aware that

• Health care is a right, not a privilege
  
• Everyone has the right to healthcare
  
• Human rights can help to protect people from poor healthcare, or no healthcare

This project, funded by the Department of Health, explores ways of assisting voluntary sector organisations working on health and social care to use human rights to provide and advocate for better services.

We have been working closely with a number of organisations in Birmingham, Liverpool and London since July 2011 and will be involving other stakeholders in order to refine a number of tools to assist voluntary sector organisations in providing and advocating for better health and social care.

We aim to establish a network of organisations interested in using human rights for better health care. The results of the project will be shared throughout this network online, through mailings, and at a number of free events. You can register to be included in the mailing list at this page, or contact Ellie Keen for information.

Opportunities to become involved

• We have set up an online resource bank which will be populated with relevant documents, ideas and case studies from the partner organisations. See our Community site for details.
• In 2012 we shall be running a series of open courses and roundtable events to share ideas and learning from the core group of organisations involved in the project.
• From September 2012 we shall be holding a series of roundtable events for key stakeholders in health and social care

For further information please contact Ellie Keen at ekeen@bihr.org.uk or 020 7882 5852