Weekly Human Rights News: 15/11/24

This week’s human rights news includes updates on two of our human rights learning programmes and the publication of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

Our 9-part practice leadership programme with Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Foundation Trust is still underway, with the penultimate workshop taking place online this week. This workshop focused on learning disability, the journeys a person can take through health services, and how human rights must be at the foundation of all decision-making and the application of new and existing policies. This workshop was co-designed and co-delivered with one of BIHR's Lived Experience Experts, Charli Clement, who shared their expertise on learning disability, autism, and the societal biases and barriers people can face when trying to access their human rights every day.

In the workshop, we shared real life stories of human rights. We shared a video of Bryn's story about a man with a learning disability being denied treatment for a heart condition, performed by members of Mencap Liverpool in partnership with BIHR in 2019. We also shared Lucy's story, a member of Pembrokeshire People First and BIHR's RITES Committee. Lucy successfully used human rights to challenge a consultation by her local health board on changes that would affect people with a learning disability because it had failed to make the consultation process accessible, and following this an Easy Read version was shared and people were given more time to understand and respond to the proposals. Participants on the workshop shared how important it is to consider human rights in all aspects of their work, from professionals meetings to goal setting with patients. 

This week we held the second of our three-part workshop course for advocates.  Our human rights learning programme is designed especially for statutory and independent advocates and aims to build expertise to use human rights law in their work. The second workshop focussed on key human rights for advocacy and supported advocates to discuss these rights in the context of real life examples of people using the Human Rights Act.

After the workshop advocates told us it was “insightful” with one person feeding back that they now have “a much better understanding of Article 8” (the right to private and family life, home and correspondence).  The final part of this course will continue on the 20th of November, and we hope that this specialised training will play a transformative role in enabling advocates to ensure public bodies uphold their statutory human rights duties.

If you would be interested in BIHR’s 3-part course being delivered in-house for your advocacy organisation or team please get in touch with us on training@bihr.org.uk

Together with Partners in Care and Health, we’ve created a guide tailored to practitioners working with young autistic people and young people with learning disabilities aged 14 -25.

The guide aims to support staff to understand their human rights duties and to place human rights at the heart of practice. It is designed to support decision-making, help staff navigate difficult conversations in meetings and to assist staff to work in partnership with the young people that they support.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was published

This Bill has been talked about in the news as the Assisted Dying Bill, as if passed it would change the law to allow terminally ill adults to request and be given assistance by doctors to end their own lives. Terminal illness is described as an illness, disease or medical treatment that will definitely get worse over time, cannot be reversed through treatment and which can be reasonably expected to cause the person’s death within six months.  

It is a Private Members’ Bill, meaning it has been introduced by a Member of Parliament who is not a government minister. For it to become law, it still has to go through the same stages as a government bill but some of the requirements are different. For example, a Private Members’ Bill does not have to include a Section 19 statement saying whether or not the MP introducing it thinks it is compatible with human rights law.

Members of Parliament will debate the Bill for the first time on Friday 29^th November. This is known as the Bill’s “second reading”. Find out more about how laws are made in our plain-language explainer.

Read the Bill

A Local Authority admitted it breached human rights by inappropriately issuing care proceedings

Ella is a child with complex needs and disabilities, including deafblindness, learning disabilities and WAGR syndrome. In April 2020, Northumberland County Council, issued care proceedings (where they ask the court for permission to take action to protect a child they believe is at risk of significant harm) in relation to Ella – despite having just two weeks before decided they didn’t need to create a child protection plan. While the care proceedings were ongoing, Ella’s mum and siblings were required to leave the family home and the Council also made changes to Ella’s care and education package which caused her significant distress.

After Ella’s family started legal proceedings, the Council agreed that Ella’s human right to private and family life had been breached. They agreed to pay £50,000 in damages.

Read the press release