One participant who often works in justice settings such as prisons and police stations shared an example of putting his new-found human rights knowledge into practice. He visited a man in a police station, who had been arrested outside a pharmacy on a Friday morning. The man was prescribed methadone, but when the participant visited him on Sunday morning he still hadn’t seen a doctor and hadn’t been given his methadone. The participant felt this was wrong, so he revisited his notes from the Rights in Recovery Leadership Programme, then contacted the police and challenged the lack of medical care. As a result, a doctor visited the man the next day.
HRA Community Advocacy Programme 2022-5
BIHR’s UK-wide Community Programme is funded from 2022 to 2025 by the Baring Foundation. It aims to strengthen the agency and voice of community and voluntary groups to tackle social injustice using human rights, aligning with BIHR’s Strategic Aim 2: Supporting Communities. It has 2 strands that run in an annual cycle:
- A series of awareness raising workshops for community groups (between 10 - 15 a year)
- An in-depth support relationship to co-develop HRA advocacy tools directly with community groups (between 4 -6 a year).
Below we include some highlights, you can read more about the programme, and the impact reports here.
Find out more about community partners we have co-developed HRA advocacy support with
2024 HRA Awareness Raising Community Support
In 2024, we expanded our reach to offer free human rights workshops to 15 community groups across 14 workshops. This included: Aberdeen in Recovery (this workshop was also attended by Caithness Family Support Group); Allies for Justice & Families for Justice; Association for Young People’s Health; ATD Fourth World; Awesta Charitable Organisation; Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living; Bristol Refugee and Asylum Seeker Partnership; Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support; Dudley Voices for Choice; People First Dorset; Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association; Supported Loving; The Traveller Movement; Wyeside Arts Centre.
Facts, figures and feedback from our 2024 workshops:
4.3/5
was how people would describe their level of knowledge of UK human rights law compared with 2.8/5 before.
4.1/5
was how people would describe their confidence discussing human rights with public services compared with 3.2/5 before.
100%
said they would recommend a BIHR human rights session.
BIHR & Scottish Recovery Consortium's Community Work
BIHR and SRC have been working together to bridge the gap between human rights policy and practice making rights real for people whose lives are affected by substance use. We have successfully delivered our Rights and Recovery Leadership Programme to two Scotland-wide cohorts, and we also recently published a joint resource on 'Using Human Rights in Recovery'.
Our partnership has been hugely successful due to the unique combination of SRC’s 15 years of lived experience knowledge and expertise and ability to connect recovery networks across Scotland with BIHR’s experience over 20 years supporting the implementation of human rights-based approaches.
Impact Report 2024 Community Leadership Programme Our Joint Guide supporting people to Use Human Rights in Recovery
Stories of change from the Rights in Recovery Programme
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