Weekly news 29.11.2024

This week we ran a face-to-face workshop with a group of practitioners with roles ranging from Best Interests Assessor to Dynamic Support Service Programme Lead.  The workshop was organised by Partners in Care and Health and brought together 15 practitioners from across England. The workshop focussed on increasing confidence about how the Human Rights Act works and being able to understand and apply the rights of autistic people and people with a learning disability in practice. This workshop was co-delivered with our Lived Experience Expert Kirsten Peebles and centred on the right to private and family life (Article 8), the right to be safe from serious harm (Article 3), the right to liberty (Article 5) and the right to non-discrimination (Article 14) We also shared BIHR’s new practitioner guide for those who support young autistic people and young people with a learning disability.

This week, we visited Southall Community Alliance as part of our London Communities Programme. As part of the visit, we delivered a workshop to SCA trustees and staff to tell them about their human rights, with a focus on the right to be free from discrimination, as well as the right to be free from slavery and forced labour.

After the workshop, we had a mapping session where SCA were able to discuss how human rights currently fit into their work, and looking at opportunities and challenges to using a human rights-based approach going forward. This was a great way to think about how we can support SCA over the remaining four years of the programme to use human rights in their work.

MPs debated the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill for the first time

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (called the Assisted Dying Bill by many people) had its second reading in the House of Commons on Friday 29th November. This is where MPs get to debate the Bill for the first time in the process of deciding whether it should become law. MPs voted to proceed with the Bill, which means it will now go to Committee Stage, where parliamentarians examine it line-by-line.

Find out more about how laws are made in our explainer.

If it passes into law, the Bill will mean that some terminally ill adults can request and be given assistance by doctors to end their own lives.

We put together an explainer of some of the key human rights issues related to assisted dying/suicide. This week, we also created a two-page summary of this explainer which you can read on our website.