Category Archives: Social Care

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New Guide to Mental Health Advocacy and Human Rights

Screen Shot 2013-05-15 at 22.31.48A quick post to draw your attention to the British Institute of Human Rights’ excellent  new publication, Mental Health Advocacy and Human Rights: Your Guide (PDF).

The Guide is aimed at non-lawyers, is attractively presented and looks very useful indeed. From the BIHR launch site:

This Mental Health Awareness week, BIHR is pleased to launch Mental Health Advocacy and Human Rights: Your Guide, our latest practical resource to help respect and protect the human rights of people with mental health problems.  This guide has been produced with Mind Brighton and Hove, Wish and NSUN, three of the partner organisations involved in our Human Rights in Healthcare project.

Aimed at both advocates and people who use services, this handy guide explains how the Human Rights Act can be used in mental health settings to secure better treatment and care for people. It draws on real life stories of how laws and legal cases can be used in everyday advocacy practice, providing helpful flow-charts, worked through examples and top tips.

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Local authority ordered to pay substantial costs in family human rights case – Adam Smith

A & S v. Lancashire County Council [2013] EWHC 851 (Fam) read judgment

This was a costs application arising from an extremely important decision by Peter Jackson J in June 2012 (see Alasdair Henderson’s post here and read judgment)

In that original judgment, Lancashire County Council were found to be in breach of Articles 8 (private life), 6 (fair trial) and Article 3 (inhuman treatment) of ECHR. Two brothers had come into local authority care as infants and were freed for adoption.

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Human rights have disappeared from ‘Working Together’ – Allan Norman

Screen Shot 2013-04-08 at 21.56.40

‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ is the lead piece of statutory guidance on… well, working together to safeguard children. Originally published in 1999, a new edition was published in 2006 following the changes brought about following the death of Victoria Climbié. And the next edition in 2010 incorporated recommendations of the second Laming Report which followed the death of Baby P. It had grown longer over time, as we all learned lessons from Haringey; but its growing length was causing concern. 

A new version was published last month. The new version was published the week after judgment was handed down in AB & Anor, R (on the application of) v The London Borough of Haringey [2013] EWHC 416 (Admin) (13 March 2013) (my firm represented the Claimants).

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Disclosure of ill-treatment allegations would breach nurse’s human rights, rules High Court

nursing-homeR (on the application of A) v the Chief Constable of Kent Constabulary [2013] EWHC 424 (Admin) – read judgment

This was an application for judicial review, and a claim under the Human Rights Act 1998, in respect of the defendant’s decision to disclose allegations of neglect and ill-treatment of care home residents in an Enhanced Criminal Records Certificate dated 12th October 2012.

Background

In August 2012, the defendant received a request from the Criminal Records Bureau  for an enhanced check to be made in respect of the Claimant concerning her proposed employment by Nightingales 24 7 as a registered nurse. The information related to the alleged mistreatment of several elderly and vulnerable adults resident in the care home in which [A] worked as a Registered General Nurse.  The allegations were made by the residents and the health care workers in the charge of A, a registered nurse who qualified in Nigeria. She claimed that these allegations had been made maliciously because the health care assistants resented the way in which she managed them. She also claimed that some of the allegations were motivated by racism. Continue reading →

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Court of Protection approves arrangements for safeguarding Article 8 rights of detained man

Court of protectionJ Council v GU and others [2012] EWHC 3531 (COP) – Read judgment

 On 11 December 2012 Mr Justice Mostyn handed down judgment in J Council v GU and others [2012] EWHC 3531 (COP) approving arrangements aimed at safeguarding the Article 8 (private and family life) rights of a 57 year old man detained under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in a private care home. At seven pages, the judgment was admirably concise.

The detained man concerned, referred to in the judgment as George, suffered from a number of separable mental disorders: childhood autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dissocial personality disorder, mixed anxiety disorder and paedophilia. He lacked the capacity to litigate or to make decisions concerning his care needs (including where he lives), medication he should take, contact he should have with others and about his finances, property and affairs. It was likely that this incapacity would continue, possibly for the remainder of his life. He lived in a private care home and it was agree by all, including the Official Solicitor (who represented George in the proceedings) that it was in his best interests for him to remain living there indefinitely. Furthermore, he should be subjected to restrictions in relation to his contact with others and correspondence in order to minimise the risks that he presented.

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No article 2 inquest over 14-year-old overdose death, despite failings

Methadone

Kent County Council, R (on the application of) v HM Coroner for the County of Kent (North-West District) & Ors [2012] EWHC 2768 (Admin) – read judgment

The High Court – including the new Chief Coroner – has held that the enhanced investigative duty under Article 2, the right to life, is not engaged in an inquest into the death of a 14 year old boy, despite “many missed opportunities” for intervention by social services being identified.  

Another sad case on when and how the enhanced investigative duty under Article 2 ECHR is engaged. EB, a troubled 14 year old, died of a methadone overdose in November 2009.  He was known to the claimant’s social services department, who were the subject of criticism in a serious case review following his death.  The review found that there had been “many missed opportunities” to intervene, but felt that:  “It cannot be concluded that a different approach … would have prevented [EB]’s death, but there is a possibility that there may have been a different outcome.”  The council have since apologised unreservedly to the family.

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VIDEO: Dignity, Death and Deprivation of Liberty – Human Rights in the Court of Protection

Last month 1 Crown Office Row hosted a fascinating panel debate on the Court of Protection and the incredibly difficult issues surrounding assisted dying.  The panel included Philip Havers QC, the philosopher A.C. Grayling and Leigh Day & Co.’s  human rights partner Richard Stein. You can now view the video here or below. Also see here for Rosalind English’s report of the event.

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Government should have consulted Child Poverty Commission on welfare strategy

Child Poverty Action Group, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2012] EWHC 2579 (Admin) (17 July 2012) – read judgment

The High Court has ruled that the government acted unlawfully by removing the Child Poverty Commission, an advisory body set up under the Child Poverty Act 2010 . They had also acted beyond their powers by preparing a child poverty strategy without having requested and having regard to the advice of that Commission. But government is free to formulate new policy and as such there was nothing irrational about the strategy itself.

There is of necessity a great deal of statutory construction in this judgment which makes for dry reading. But the ruling is an important reassessment of the principles of judicial review that have taken root since the power of the courts to intervene in government decision making was reinforced in Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 A.C. 147. This ruling, as every law student knows, established that a public body acts unlawfully, both in the narrow sense of acting outside its jurisdiction, and where such jurisdiction was wrongly exercised. This means that courts may intervene not just where a governmental act is unlawful under an express provision of the statute but also where the decision or policy, although authorised by statute, has been made in breach of a rule of public law. Continue reading →

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Should we be using ‘special’ offences to prosecute crimes against disabled people? – Lucy Series

Eleven Winterbourne View staff have pleaded guilty to 38 charges of ill-treatment and neglect of a mental health patient under s127 Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA).  In this post I want to consider why we need ‘special’ offences like s127 MHA and also s44 Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), rather than prosecuting crimes in care settings using more ‘mainstream’ offences. 

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), with articles emphasising access to justice (Article 13) and equal recognition before the law (Article 12) encourages us to think about how we can ensure disabled people have effective access to the law that protects us all before we develop parallel ‘special’ systems of rights protection (see, for example, Inclusion Europe, European Disability Forum).  So my question is: why are we using ‘special’ offences of ill-treatment and neglect to prosecute crimes that occur in care, rather than the ordinary ‘offences against the person’ those outside of care rely upon?

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Scottish adoption law compatible with human right to family life

ANS v ML [2012] UKSC 30 - read judgment / press summary

Another week and another judgment about adoption. This time it is a decision of the Supreme Court about the Scottish family law system. Whereas last week’s post was about a case where children should have been placed into adoption, but were not, this case concerned a mother who opposed an adoption order being made for her child. The mother challenged the legislation which allowed the court to make an adoption order without her consent, arguing that it was incompatible with her Article 8 rights to private and family life. However, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no breach of the Convention. 

The appellant mother argued that s.31 of the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 was incompatible with the Convention. This would mean it was unlawful, as statutory provisions incompatible with the ECHR are not within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament under s.29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998. (This is different to the UK Parliament in Westminster, which is able to legislate contrary to the ECHR, and the most the courts can do under the Human Rights Act is make a declaration of incompatibility.)

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Care system failures breach children’s human rights

A & S v. Lancashire County Council [2012] EWHC 1689 – read judgment 

The poor quality of provision for children in care was much in the headlines last week. A highly critical report by the Deputy Children’s Commissioner, which found children in many privately run care homes were at high risk of suffering violent or sexual abuse, was followed by the Government’s announcement of plans to speed up the adoption process and allow families who wish to adopt children to foster them first.

The problems of the current system and the effect these have on the lives of individual children was also vividly highlighted in a tragic case in which the High Court held that a series of failures by a local authority constituted a breach of two young boys’ rights under Articles 3 (protection from inhuman and degrading treatment), 6 (fair trial rights) and 8 (family and private life rights).

The very distressing story of the boys’ lives to date is set out in considerable detail at paragraphs 18-102 of Mr Justice Jackson (Jackson J)’s judgment. However, the brief facts are as follows. A and S are brothers who were first taken into care in 1998, aged just 3 and 6 months’ old, after their mother abandoned them. The local authority initially placed them with their aunt, but she was a single woman with six children of her own and could not cope.

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Housing benefit system discriminated against disabled people, rules Court of Appeal

Burnip v. Birmingham City Council, Trengrove v. Walsall Metropolitan Council, Gorry v. Wiltshire Council [2012] EWCA Civ 629 – read judgment

In the same week that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan-Smith, announced his intention to implement sweeping reforms of the current system of disability benefits, the Court of Appeal has ruled that housing benefit rules were discriminatory against disabled people, in breach of Article 14 read with Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention.

Mr Duncan-Smith has already faced opposition to his reform proposals but has made it clear that he is willing to tackle this controversial issue. However, this week’s ruling is a timely reminder that social security law is extremely complex and that the Government will have to tread very carefully to avoid unwittingly causing further instances of unlawful discrimination.

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Unlawful to refuse support for Portuguese with AIDS – Nearly Legal

De Almeida, R (on the application of) v Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea [2012] EWHC 1082 (Admin) – Read judgment

This was a judicial review of RBK&C’s refusal to provide support under s.21 and s.29 National Assistance Act 1948 and indeed to carry out an assessment under s.47 of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.

Mr De A is a Portuguese national. He lived in the UK from 1998 to 2001 and from 2008 to date. He worked during the first period and for a year after his return. Mr De A had contracted HIV and AIDS. His health deteriorated so that he was not able to work. His prognosis in October 2010 was that he had about a year to live. At the time of the first hearing in this case in November 2011, his prognosis was about 6 months.

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European Court got it right on mental health detention delay – Martha Spurrier

This piece is in response to Rosalind English’s post on this blog arguing that in M.S. v United Kingdom the European Court extended to far the ambit of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects against torture, and inhuman or degrading treatment. This post argues that the European Court’s ruling is both a logical step in the jurisprudence and a welcome one for the protection of those with mental health problems in state detention. 

M.S. v United Kingdom identifies a gap in the provision of crisis mental healthcare for those in state detention that has long been recognised by lawyers, campaigning organisations, carers, service users, the police and healthcare providers. The judgment is a welcome recognition of two things: first, that a prolonged and acute mental health crisis while in state detention can amount to degrading treatment for the purposes of Article 3 ECHR. And second, that the state is responsible when delays in the provision of psychiatric care to those in detention cause someone with mental health problems to descend into a crisis that is degrading and undignified.

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Irrational, inhuman and degrading: detention of a mentally ill asylum-seeker was unlawful

R (on the application of HA (Nigeria)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 979 (Admin) – Read judgment

The detention of a mentally ill person in an Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment and false imprisonment, and was irrational, the High Court has ruled.

Mr Justice Singh heard a judicial review application by a Nigerian National against decisions to continue to detain him under the UK Borders Act 2007 and the conditions of that detention. From August 2009, HA, an overstaying visitor and asylum seeker, was detained at various IRCs following his release from prison for a drug-related offence which triggered the automatic deportation provisions of the 2007 Act. His behaviour during detention became increasingly disturbed and strange. In January 2010, he was seen by a psychiatrist who recommended HA’s transfer to a mental hospital for assessment and treatment.

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