Human Rights in Health and Social Care
Human rights are not just another challenge for a highly pressured health and social care sector to meet. If embedded in existing policies and practices, human rights can improve experiences for everybody – from service users, to workers, to service commissioners and providers. Human rights are a means of providing an ethical ethos, as advocated by public reviews such as the Francis Inquiry and Cavendish Review.
To help make this a reality, the Commission established its Human Rights in Health and Social Care programme. It is a 2 year project spanning 2014-16, to assist the English health and social care sector's compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998. The project aims to achieve the following outcomes:
- Increased knowledge, understanding and ability in the health and social care sector for the purpose of meeting its statutory duties to respect, protect and promote human rights, including by addressing inequalities;
- Increased knowledge, understanding and ability among health and social care service providers and commissioners to translate human rights concepts and protections into higher quality service design and delivery; and
- Improved care experiences for patients, service users, their families and carers, through embedding a human rights based approach into service delivery.
In pursuit of these outcomes, the Commission is delivering:
- A suite of resources which provide enhanced, transferable human rights learning across the health and social care sector;
- Training materials for Council leaders who commission human rights in home care for older people;
- A signposting page that links to educational resources for the health and social care sector, from one central location.
Last Updated: 29 Feb 2016