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

Please visit our new Community website to find out more about our work in health and social care.

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