Our commitment to promoting and upholding the rights of people who use social care and childcare services

Human Rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to everyone.

Human Rights are based on core principles like dignity, fairness, equality, respect and autonomy. They are relevant to our day-to-day life and protect our freedom to control our own lives, effectively take part in decisions made by public authoriProtecting, promoting and supporting rights is at the heart of all social care and childcare work. It includes protecting people who are at risk of harm or abuse.

“Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. 

They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life.

They can never be taken away, although they can sometimes be restricted – for example if a person breaks the law, or in the interests of national security.

These basic rights are based on shared values like dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence. 

These values are defined and protected by law.

In Britain our human rights are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998.”

Source: Equality and Human Rights Commission

The Human Rights Act contains 16 rights. These originate from the European Convention of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 brings them into UK law.

Our human rights need protecting most when we feel the least powerful and are relying on others for our basic needs – including when we are using care services. Where care is delivered in line with human rights legislation, it is by nature good quality. 

All public sector bodies have duties to respect, protect and fulfil the rights people have under the Human Rights Act 1998 when carrying out our functions. We also have duties to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different groups under the Equality Act 2010. 

The legal framework governing social care and childcare services has been carefully developed to incorporate and reflect people’s rights. These include the ‘Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2014’, the ‘Regulation and Inspection of Social Care Act 2016’, the ‘Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010’ and associated regulations, codes of practice, statutory guidance and national minimum standards. A focus on human rights ensures people receive good care and helps us fulfil our duties and purpose by meeting our legal obligations. 

Issues of human rights are important to people who access care– such as dignity, respect and fairness, although people rarely use the formal language of human rights. Rights-based care is intrinsically linked with the quality of care, for example:

• being cared for in ways where restrictive practices are used only as a last resort, such as when there is no other option to keep people safe
• having conflicting rights balanced and considered appropriately, especially in terms of positive risk taking
• the rights of staff and how staff are supported.

As a regulator, our role is to make sure people have safe, high-quality care. Care that does not respect and promote human rights is neither safe nor high-quality. Ensuring people who use care services have their fundamental rights respected and upheld is a priority for us. When delivering care, practices that respect human rights are fundamental to good outcomes for people.

We actively promote and seek to uphold people’s legal human rights by:

• reviewing the performance of local authority social services functions,
• providing the first gateway to promoting good care through our registration process,
• undertaking inspections, and
• supporting, and where required enforcing, improvement in regulated social care and childcare services. 

We have also published a Joint Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy with HIW. We are strengthening the focus on equality, diversity and inclusion in our work to drive improvements in the delivery of social care and childcare services for people who share one or more of the protected characteristics. Where we find inequalities, we will challenge and report on this. 

Our inspection frameworks are underpinned by rights based approaches and take account of, but are not limited to: 

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• European convention of Human Rights
• The Human Rights Act 1998 (External link)
• The Equality Act 2010 (External link)
• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCR) (External link)
• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (External link)
• The United Nations Principles for Older Persons
• The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (External link)
• The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) - due to be replaced by Liberty Protection Standards
• The Welsh Language Standards (External link)

People working in social care, including in CIW, are working to make a positive difference to people’s lives. People whose voices are less heard, valued and understood are the people who need protecting the most. 

With Social Care Wales we have developed guidance to support positive cultures in social care. One of the key principles is protecting, promoting and supporting rights including protecting people who are at risk of harm or abuse.

A rights-based approach means we:

• protect human rights
• value people’s lived experience, respecting their voice, choice and control
• give people the personalised support they need to achieve what matters to them
• value diversity, and think about how policies and practices will affect people with protected characteristics – especially when we need to make decisions, or talk to people about the support they need
• make sure people have a say in decisions that affect them
• move from a position of non-discrimination (protecting) towards proactive anti-discrimination
• look at ways to promote and enhance people’s rights and change how we do things to benefit all
• address organisational practices, policies and rules to make sure they don’t lead to unequal outcomes and institutional discrimination

More information is available on our support positive cultures webpage. 

Human rights apply equally to staff working in social care and childcare services, for example the right to whistle-blow about poor care. In a positive culture where the rights of staff are respected, care will be of a higher quality as staff are empowered to do the right thing and therefore better able to deliver positive outcomes for people. Central to respecting the rights of staff is ensuring equality and inclusion for them and building diverse teams to enable delivery of high-quality care and support.

We integrate a rights based approach in inspections by adhering to the underlying FREDA core principles of:

• Fairness
• Respect
• Equity
• Dignity
• Autonomy

Practice examples

• Ensuring there is a robust and fair process for dealing with concerns and whistleblowing about conduct of staff
  • Value: Fairness
  • Human right: Right to fair trial
• Respecting diverse families Avoid denying access to family without good reason
  • Value: Respect
  • Human right: Right to respect for family and private life, home and correspondence
• Ensure people are not discriminated against on the basis of age or disability
  • Value: Equality
  • Human right: Right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of other human rights
• Ensure sufficient staffing to maintain people’s dignity
  • Value: Dignity
  • Human right: Right not to be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way
• Involving people in decisions about their care
  • Value: Autonomy
  • Human right: Right to respect for private life

We consider people’s rights during inspection and our inspection frameworks contain detailed descriptors of what good and excellent look like under four themes of:

• Well-being
• Care and Support / Care and Development
• Leadership and Management
• Environment (where services are “setting” based).

For local authorities we inspect in relation to the four key principles of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2015 (well-being, people, prevention, partnership) with lines of enquiry in relation to upholding human rights weaving through each theme. 

Our approach to securing improvement and enforcement is based on an assessment of risk to people’s well-being, including infringement of their rights. Where care is unacceptable, we will always take action. 

Human rights and links with inspection lines of enquiry

Our work aligns with the FREDA core principles. The information below provides examples of our inspection lines of enquiry focusing on people’s rights.

Articles

• Article 2: Right to life
• Article 3: Freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment
• Article 5: Right to liberty and security
• Article 6: Right to a fair trial
• Article 8: Respect for your private and family life, home and correspondence
• Article 9: Right to freedom of thought, belief and religion
• Article 10: Freedom of expression
• Article 12: Right to marry and start a family
• Article 14: Right of protection from discrimination
• Protocol 1, Article 2: Right to education

Potential lines of enquiry consider the extent to which:

• people are treated with dignity and respect
• people contribute to the decisions that affect their life, or have someone who can do it for them
• people are provided with a service which considers their personal wishes, aspirations and outcomes
• people feel safe, happy and valued
• children develop, learn and become independent
• people’s right to remain living in their in own home is upheld
• people are safe and protected from abuse and neglect
• people are supported with religious observance such as prayer, diet or the opportunity to participate in religious festivals
• people are supported to access communication support or independent advocacy.
• people working at the service are supported to raise concerns about the service through whistleblowing procedures.
• people are protected from risk of infection through hygienic practices
• people have access to information about the service to enable informed choice
• people are able to raise complaints through an accessible complaints policy and learning from complaints is demonstrated.

In addition to the universal human rights set out above, the following also apply to our work:

Equality Act

When we inspect we take into account how service providers/local authorities consider the protected characteristics of:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

UN convention on the Rights of the Child

• The right to a childhood (including protection from harm and the right to leisure, play, culture and education).
• The right to be healthy (including access to medical care).
• The right to be treated fairly (including changing laws and practices that are unfair on children as well as discrimination against children, for examples on grounds of ethnicity, gender, religion or disability).
• The right to be heard (including considering children's views)

UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities

This convention includes rights to:

• Accessibility
• Live independently and being included in the community
• Personal mobility
• Access to information
• Equal health services and rehabilitation.

UN Principles for Older Persons

There are 18 principles, grouped under the five themes below:

• Independence
• Participation
• Care
• Self-Fulfillment
• Dignity

Further information on our rights based approach to the review of local authority social services functions and inspection of regulated social care and childcare services is set out in our relevant Codes of Practice:

• Code of Practice for Inspection of Regulated Services
• Code of Practice for Review of Local Authority Social Services
• Code of Practice for Inspection of Child Minding, Day Care and Open Access Play Services