Human Rights in Healthcare Project

‘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

The 'Human Rights in Healthcare' project has been running since October 2006, with an overall aim of supporting the use of human rights based approaches in improving health and social care. The project is led by the Department of Health in partnership with five NHS trusts, BIHR and ROI Operations.

The main outputs and activities of the project 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 pilot 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
   

From September 2009 - June 2010, four of these Trusts are working to implement a human rights based approach to an operational area of their work, such as a specific ward or service, with support from BIHR. This builds on previous work carried out by the Trusts on developing human rights good practice. 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 - report available shortly)

A further learning event is planned for July 2010 - further details will be posted here.

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. They will be continuing to evaluate the project from 2009 - 10 with a further report planned for September 2010. Download the 2008 report.

For more information about the Human rights in healthcare project please contact Lucy Matthews on lmatthews@bihr.org.uk.