Human rights are our rights by the very nature of our being human. They link us together in our common humanity. They provide, through international human rights conventions and domestic laws, agreements about how we should live together and treat each other based upon respect for human dignity.

Someone once said to me “I knew I had rights but I didn’t know they were the same as other peoples”. Unless people know their rights, they cannot exercise them. They cannot draw on their connective power.

It was this idea that informed the writing of the book Human Rights and Social Care Putting Rights into Practice. I wanted to explore the transformative potential for adopting a human rights based approach to social care. The PANEL principles of Participation, Accountabilty, Non-discrimination, Equality and Empowerment and Legality provide a steely core upon which the work of C-Change Scotland is based.

Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chair of the inaugural United Nations Commission on Human Rights, expressed a desire that a “curious grapevine” would carry the idea of human rights into every corner of the world. The hope is that this book adds one small branch to that ever expanding “curious grapevine”.

Human Rights and Social Care: Putting Rights into Practice (Policy and Practice in Health and Social Care) is available now via amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Rights-Social-Care-Practice/dp/1780460678