Exploring Social Services: How a Human Rights Approach Offers as a Complementary Perspective

The way we collectively design and deliver social services shapes our community outcomes.

Historically, traditional charity and needs-based approaches have long been central to social service frameworks, each with their own strengths and limitations. However, over the years, experts have been exploring how a human rights-based approach might offer additional perspectives that could enhance both processes and outcomes while helping address some of the persistent and "wicked" structural challenges that many service providers grapple with daily.

Reflecting on Current Approaches

Charity approaches come from a place of genuine care and have provided critical support to countless individuals. However, some practitioners have noted that they sometimes position service users as passive recipients of assistance, which can create unintended dependency dynamics. Similarly, needs-based approaches excel at addressing immediate challenges but may have limited capacity to identify, acknowledge and examine the broader systemic factors at play.

The Danish Institute for Human Rights suggests that traditional models might sometimes create unintended power dynamics between providers and recipients. From my experience working within various social service frameworks, I've noticed how challenging it can be to balance immediate assistance with longer-term empowerment goals. Many colleagues across the sector share similar observations about this tension.

Considering What Rights-Based Thinking Might Offer

The human rights-based approach offers an interesting perspective by framing people as rights-holders rather than beneficiaries. This shift serves to influence service relationships and organisational dynamics in three key ways worth considering:

1. It creates space for multi-stakeholder empowerment. Service users

   might find additional agency as active participants in their own development.

   Organisations could evolve their role from primarily providing charity to also upholding rights with appropriate accountability frameworks. From what I've employees sometimes experience a shift in how they view their purpose when rights frameworks are introduced alongside existing approaches.

2. It encourages examination of structural factors. Rights-based approaches often

   invite us to consider the systemic barriers that contribute to disadvantage. The Danish Institute for Human Rights suggests this approach can help complement individual interventions by also addressing root causes of inequality and exclusion. This dual focus might help with those complex issues that many decision-makers find particularly challenging.

3. It potentially offers additional outcome measures. By considering both process and

   outcomes, rights frameworks might provide supplementary accountability structures. Service evaluation could potentially incorporate measures of participation and inclusion alongside traditional output metrics.

Potential Considerations for Policy Makers

For those of us working in policy and leadership roles, exploring rights-based elements

alongside existing frameworks is well worth considering, with the potential to achieve more for our clients, staff and organisations with less time, effort and stress.

Organisations that have implemented rights-based approaches service-wide have reported positive outcomes in areas like social cohesion and service efficiency. These early findings suggest potential for building additional community capacity to address complex social challenges.

As we collectively consider the future of social services, perhaps we might believe we will benefit from ongoing dialogue about how different approaches – including rights-based perspectives – can complement each other. The conversation about balancing immediate needs with systemic change is one that invites multiple voices and perspectives. It is my hope that these reflections contribute helpfully to this important ongoing discussion that ultimately affects us all.

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