Realizing Human Rights in Clinical Practice and Service Delivery to Persons with Cognitive Impairment who Engage in Behaviours of Concern1

Abstract

Recent national and international legal developments have intensified the need for clinicians and service providers to understand and apply human rights in clinical practice and service delivery to persons with cognitive impairment who engage in behaviours of concern. Treatment and service interventions must now be subordinated to even more explicit human rights-related legal and ethical constraints and also to affirmative human rights-related objectives. The ability of clinicians and providers to engage in competent human rights analysis is a necessary methodological implication of this paradigm shift. In this paper we elaborate a formative method of human rights analysis that is being developed to assist the Victorian Office of the Senior Practitioner to apply human rights standards recognized under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities to persons with cognitive impairment who engage in behaviours of concern. This approach relies significantly upon the CRPD as an interpretive aid to enliven Charter rights to specific human rights concerns faced by persons with disability. Although developed in a specific statutory and organizational context, this model has potential for broader application.