Simon Katterl and I recently developed some human rights resources to help public servants working on the mental health and wellbeing reforms. The resources were commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health, and with their agreement, we’re making them freely available to you.
The resources complement those available to the sector through the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and are tailored for the department's context and activities like policy advice, service design, engagement, commissioning, and evaluation.
Human rights are about the most basic things that we need as human beings to live a life with dignity.
Taking a human rights approach in the mental health and wellbeing system helps to drive better outcomes for the people the system is there to support. It can also help public servants and service providers to navigate the complex work that comes with large-scale reform.
The Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System observed in its Final Report - Summary and Recommendations (page 30) that:
"In a contemporary mental health and wellbeing system, consumers' human rights are respected every step of the way. Consumers are supported to make decisions that affect their own lives. Real changes will be put in place to shift practices and cultures, ensuring consumers' human rights are upheld".
Taking a human rights approach is also the law for public authorities in Victoria.
The legal context in Victoria
Under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic), it’s a legal requirement for Victorian public authorities to consider and act compatibly with human rights.
Public authorities include public servants, hospitals and other service providers funded by the Victorian Government, and relevant institutions such as the Mental Health Complaints Commission.
Public servants also have obligations to respect and promote human rights under the Public Administration Act 2004 (Vic) and the Code of Conduct.
Further, one of the core objectives of the new Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 (Vic) is to ‘protect and promote the human rights and dignity of people living with mental illness by providing them with assessment and treatment in the least restrictive way possible in the circumstances’ (s 12(e)).
The resources
Resource 1 – Thinking about human rights
The first resource provides guidance on how to make decisions using human rights. It sets out three key steps:
First, forecast the impacts of today’s decision today on people’s human rights tomorrow. Part of this will require collaborating with people with lived experience.
Second, assess the human rights situation. This requires understanding the history of human rights issues in your specific area and whether some rights are currently lacking or limited.
Third, decide on how you are going to properly promote, comply and balance rights.
Resource 2 – Applying human rights
The second resource provides information about what individual human rights mean and how they can be relevant to work in the mental health and wellbeing system.
Often when people think about human rights in the mental health context they consider issues like compulsory treatment and restrictive practices. These practices are certainly significant limitations on human rights. But human rights can also inform the way services are designed to be safe and accessible for Victoria’s diverse population. They can be about privacy and having access to important information. They can also inform decisions that promote connection to family, culture and religion. These are just some examples.
Human rights issues are woven throughout people’s experiences of the mental health and wellbeing system.
Resource 3 – Embedding equality checklist
The third resource is a one-page checklist to prompt thinking about the diverse needs of the Victorian community and the attributes that are protected under the Charter and the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic).
Resource 4 – Human rights worksheet
The fourth resource is a worksheet to help people work through the human rights impacts of their work.
It’s been a privilege to collaborate with Simon on these resources. Simon brings lived experience expertise and significant system and advocacy experience, having worked at Independent Mental Health Advocacy, the Mental Health Complaints Commission, and the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, and having served as a board member of the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (the consumer peak body).
In designing these resources, we were also fortunate to work with a range of staff from the department’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Division who spoke to us about the challenges they faced and the hopes they had for applying human rights in their work.
You can download the resources now and please get in touch if you want to talk about the framework or what might support a human rights approach in your work.
Disclaimer: These resources were developed for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Division of the Victorian Department of Health. Public servants within the department were our key audience and the materials are framed to support their roles in areas such as policy, engagement, commissioning, system management and oversight. The resources are provided for information purposes to build awareness of human rights. They should not be taken for, or relied on, as legal advice.
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