"Enhancing respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights to achieve high quality health and social care."

Overview

There are many examples where human rights have been considered in health and social care. The dementia strategy is one example, and there are other examples of good practice across many services. However, there are also many examples where the provision of health and social care is not currently designed to enable the workforce to practice a human rights based approach as a matter of course. Practice is not consistent and there have been well documented examples where practice has manifestly fallen below human rights standards. Overall the public sector workforce in Scotland is far from having a common, shared and practical sense of what human rights means for day to day practice.

What SNAP aims to achieve

  • Embedding human rights in ongoing change and improvement of health and care, including the integration of health and social care, the review of the National Care Standards and the drive for person-centred health and care.

  • Taking a human rights based approach to reducing health inequalities.

  • Taking action to realise the right to independent living for all, including through self-directed support.

  • Improving understanding and practices to uphold autonomy, including through Scotland's learning disabilities strategy and reviews of law and practice on mental health, legal capacity and guardianships.

  • Improving support for children and young people leaving care, looked after children and children in kinship care.

  • Improving outcomes when it comes to carers' rights including the right to an adequate standard of living and to work

  • Securing more consistent understanding and respect for human rights in mental health care and treatment.

  • Enabling the health and care workforce to put a human rights based approach into practice, building on good practice in areas like dementia care.

Progress and future plans

The Action Group on Health and Social Care is working as a small planning group, leveraging its connections and networks to raise awareness of human rights based approaches and SNAP. To date, it has:

  • produced a briefing paper on health and human rights

  • organised a well-attended stakeholder event to consult on future priorities

  • begun to explore the potential for a network of 'champions' - people whose rights are affected in practice who would help to bridge the gap between policy and people's lives

  • produced a series of short films and a companion booklet to show human rights in action in five different health and care settings

  • launched a microsite to collate and share resources about human rights in health and care