The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) State of Care 2025/26 report reminds us that health and social care services across the system must respect and protect people’s human rights every day, including - and especially - when the system is under pressure.
CQC is the independent regulator for health and social care services in England, responsible for upholding standards of care across the sector. This report is an annual assessment of the health and care sector in England, shining a spotlight on trends, good practice, and areas for improvement based on evidence from across their work, with perspectives from people who use services, families and carers.
What does the report say?
This year’s report, published on Friday 23 October, identifies increased pressure on the system, workforce challenges, and inequalities in accessing the right care and support, with people living in deprived areas and people from minoritised communities experiencing a greater level of need.
Demand for community mental health services has risen, with the report noting a 34% increase in the number of people in contact with services in the past three years. The rise in demand is also seen among children and young people, with over 80,000 having waited over a year for an appointment. Helping people to be discharged from mental health hospitals is made more difficult by a shortage of community care options, problems with sharing information, and poor representation from social care at planning meetings, leading to delays in discharge, people experiencing relapses and readmissions to hospital, and increased pressure on the system.
There are some signs of progress too, including better experiences for people contacting their GPs and fewer delays for elective care.
When systems are struggling, human rights must be part of the solution
Overall, the CQC’s State of Care report echoes many of the challenges we have seen for years across health and social care, of a system under significant pressure. The findings of the report are more than just numbers on a page – we need to remember the human cost when we speak about increasing demand: where a person is struggling to get the support they need, when they need it, with potentially serious repercussions for themselves, and possibly their families and wider communities.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England, published last year, calls for a shift towards community-based and preventative care, however the CQC’s report notes that a clear plan for strategy and accountability is still needed for this to become a reality. Without this, we will continue to see people facing barriers to living well in their communities which can lead to human rights issues. Individuals may be more likely to reach crisis point and experience greater harm to their physical and mental health, which often requires a more intensive reactive, rather than proactive, response from services.
At BIHR, we work with partners across health and care services to ensure that the Human Rights Act (HRA) can be understood and used as a practical and relevant tool in everyday life, not just in the courts. We hear stories of where this isn’t happening – where people are unable to access the support they need, experience unnecessary restrictions on their lives, or are simply not listened to in decisions affecting them or their families.
We also see the difference that knowledge and confidence in the HRA can make, enabling public services to proactively consider how decisions may impact on people’s rights and avoid disproportionate interferences with people’s freedoms, and empowering communities who draw on public services to ask questions and propose solutions that better respect their rights.
The report is an important reminder that human rights principles should underpin the delivery of good quality and timely health and social care support, guiding a person-centred, proactive and joined-up approach to ensure that people are treated with dignity, have a say over their care, get help when they need it, and are enabled to live the life they choose.
Why do human rights matter in health and social care?
We call on CQC, government, and partners across the health and social care system to make human rights an explicit part of their response to the challenges identified in this year’s State of Care report.
The Human Rights Act protects 16 rights, many of which are central in the delivery of health and social care services. Important rights include the right to private and family life (Article 8), which ensures that people’s privacy, autonomy, wellbeing and relationships are respected in their interactions with services. The right to be free from discrimination (Article 14), which ensures that people can enjoy their other human rights equally, is also crucial, especially in light of the disparities in access to support highlighted in this report.
The report also highlights the implications of the Supreme Court’s June 2026 judgment on the right to liberty, protected by Article 5 of the Human Rights Act. The judgment changes how a deprivation of liberty is assessed, with important practice implications across the health and social care landscape. BIHR welcomes CQC’s emphasis on protecting people’s human rights during this period of change, including where care arrangements do not meet the threshold for a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) authorisation. A change in this threshold must not mean that we lose sight of people’s views, wishes and rights.
Our 5-part blog series, Rethinking the Right to Liberty, explores the implications of the judgment and how health and social care services can use their Human Rights Act duties to support person-centred care, looking beyond authorisations to consider how decisions affect each person, listening to their views and wishes, and ensuring that restrictions are properly considered and justified.
The findings of this report resonate with BIHR’s work to protect and promote human rights across the UK. The Human Rights Act provides an important framework to guide the response, not only as a tool to avoid harm and secure accountability, but as a means of enabling person-centred and proactive decision-making that can improve people’s experiences of care and outcomes for the future.
Explore further:
Read about real human rights stories from health, social care and social work.
Our human rights programmes with health and social care systems:
Reducing restrictive practices with East of England Provider Collaborative
Avoiding hospital admission for autistic people and people with a learning disability with West Midlands ADASS & NHS England Midlands
Supporting young people transitioning from children’s to adult service with Partners in Care & Health
Rethinking the Right to Liberty – a 5-part blog series with practitioner, lived experience, care sector and legal perspectives on how the Supreme Court’s AGNI judgment redraws the line on Article 5 of the Human Rights Act.