This summer, the British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) launched our new advocacy human rights toolkit, developed in partnership with six organisations across England. These resources can be downloaded for free here. We are now coming to the end of our consultation process on these resources, but there's still time to get in touch with us if you would like to make suggestions.

BIHR’s project Care and Support: A Human Rights Approach to Advocacy, is empowering six advocacy and support organisations to make best use of the Human Rights Act in their everyday work supporting people with mental health and/or mental capacity issues.

Taking an innovative approach, the project works directly with staff and service-users and clients at Healthwatch Blackburn with Darwen, n|compass advocacy service, the National Service User Network (NSUN), WISH (A voice for women’s mental health), Mind Brighton and Hove, BHA (Leeds Skyline). We also engage with the wider local voluntary sector in our partner areas to help improve the human rights capacity of advocates locally. We have a number of upcoming events - to see more information about them, and to book on, please click here.

Our new resources are an important contribution to meeting the need for accessible, authoritative and practical information to support people and their advocates in ensuring health and care services respect and protect their human rights.

“Our work shows the often untold story of human rights; how our Human Rights Act can empower people who are all too often disempowered and support them in receiving the dignified and respectful care everyone wants to see. We look forward to continuing work our advocacy partners to place our much needed human rights resources into the hands of people with mental health and mental capacity issues.”

• For a BIHR spokesperson to find out more about the toolkit or the project please contact Helen Wildbore [email protected] / 0207 882 5850.
• The national toolkit launched on 18 August 2016 in Blackburn. The resources are: Mental Health, Mental Capacity: My human rights
  and Mental Health, Mental Capacity: My human rights (accessible version) and Mental Health, Mental Capacity: Raising a human rights issue, which can be downloaded here
• For information About BIHR watch this film, to hear about the impact of the Human Rights Act from people in the public and voluntary sector watch this short video, and understand the Human Rights Act in Two Minutes with this film.