Andrew Strong believes human rights should be at the heart of health and social care in Scotland

Earlier this week I appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee discussing the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill. Whilst the substantive discussion on the day centred on the nature of the legislation, we heard an impassioned plea from Steve Robertson, chairperson of People First (Scotland)an independent self-advocacy organisation run by and for people with learning disabilities and ALLIANCE member organisation.

In his evidence, Steve eloquently and passionately described human-rights infringements faced by people with learning disabilities across Scotland every day. People with learning disabilities are often denied education opportunities through a lack of support and inflexible systems. They experience more instances of crime, including sexual abuse and are more likely to be denied the right to have relationships and start a family.

In fact, as a result of infringements of their human rights, people with learning disabilities are expected to die 20 years younger than the average Scot.

These concerns are just a small part of the evidence backing the need for Scotland’s first National Action Plan for Human Rights, created by the Scottish Human Rights Commission last year.

The ALLIANCE and NHS Health Scotland are co-convening the Health and Social Care Action Group to identify, promote and test actions to overcome human-rights abuses and identify barriers to human-rights based approaches to health and social care.

To supplement that work next week the Health and Social Care Academy, an ALLIANCE initiative aimed at supporting transformational change in health and social care across Scotland, is hosting a master class on global work on health, social care and human rights. We’re proud to welcome Jonathan Cohen, deputy director of the Open Society Foundations Public Health Program based in New York to reflect and consider international perspectives on enhancing respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights to achieve high quality health and social care.

Jonathan has written extensively on the importance of a human rights approach to healthcare. He was a researcher with the HIV/Aids and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, where he conducted numerous investigations of rights violations linked to the Aids epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and North America.

This event at Strathclyde University is being held in partnership with the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Centre for Health Policy at Strathclyde University, NHS Health Scotland and the Open Society Foundations.

Places are free and you can register by emailing [email protected] or call 0141 404 0231.

Andrew Strong is policy and information manager at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (ALLIANCE).