Transforming Organisations

Leeds & York Partnership Foundation Trust

We worked with Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust (LYPFT) to support staff to embed human rights across services through both a capacity-building and a Practice Leads programme.

How we designed the programme

BIHR have been working together with LYPFT to support them to embed human rights within the trust for the past year. In the autumn of 2022, they commissioned a taster for mixed staff teams and then their board. The trust saw the immense value of what could be achieved and committed to a long term change programme.

In the spring of 2023, BIHR are delivered a two-part human rights practitioner development programme for staff working multiple disciplines across the trust. The aim of the programme was to improve outcomes for people who access LYPFT services by developing the ability of all staff to integrate human rights into their everyday practice. 

We are also currently co-developing a series of online and in-person Practice Leads workshops providing intensive learning support for senior staff to create proactive human rights champions within the trust. The Practice Leads workshops are created based on information gathered from mapping activities with staff about the specific human rights and issues that they most want to focus on. This part of the programme started in September and will end in December 2023.

About the programme

Two-part staff introductory human rights programme:

We developed this two-part programme starting with an introduction to human rights law and a refresher workshop with a focus on putting rights into practice. 
We started in January and finished delivering the human rights workshops for staff in July 2023. By the end of the programme, we delivered 30 workshops.

Eight-part Practice Leads programme:

We are preparing and delivering introductory human rights workshops for around 40 Practice Leads. Running from September to December 2023, both the first and last session will be in person in Leeds.
We are currently working together with the Practice Leads to map the content for the majority of the programme. This will support staff to increase their awareness of human rights, focus in on key articles within the Human Rights Act,  sustain learning and development, problem-solve, and share good practice.
We will use the information from the Practice Leads about their learning needs to work with our Lived Experience Experts to create bespoke human rights workshops.
We will support staff to reflect on their learning over the course of the programme and make a plan for embedding human rights into their future work.

Participant on our LYPFT programme

"I found the programme very engaging and useful in terms of learning to reflect on and apply a human rights approach within my work. A reflective and non-judgemental space where I felt able to ask questions and contribute."

Participant on our LYPFT programme

"I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this course to anyone in the public sector it is really accessible for what is quite an intimidating topic."