The ITHACA toolkit for monitoring human rights and general health care

The ITHACA toolkit has been developed to monitor human rights and health care in mental health and social care institutions. It is designed to be used by groups undertaking independent human rights monitoring. The toolkit can also be of benefit to independent non-governmental organisations who wish to carry out monitoring and to national and supranational monitoring bodies.
Background of the toolkit

Roadmap to the ITHACA toolkit

Below is information about the content of the entire ITHACA toolkit.
The whole ITHACA toolkit (PDF 552,6 KB)

The ITHACA toolkit contains the following sections:

• Section 1: Aims of the toolkit

• Section 2: Basics about human rights. The section outlines the human rights standards relevant to the topic of monitoring mental health and social care institutions, and sets out some mechanisms of human rights protection. It introduces the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

• Section 3: Background information to conduct the general health care monitoring. This provides information on topics of particular concern to the general health of persons with mental health disabilities.

• Section 4: Practicalities of carrying out human rights monitoring in mental health and social care institutions. The section looks at the purpose of human rights monitoring and how monitoring can be followed up with other methods.

• Section 5: The principles of human rights monitoring. These include doing no harm, the necessity of carrying out regular monitoring, the need to demonstrate independence, building a credible team and collecting reliable information.

• Section 6: Practicalities of how to conduct human rights monitoring. This section includes how to conduct interviews with people with mental health problems and intellectual disabilities, how to review documentation, how to make observations, and how to record information.

• Section 7: The ten steps of human rights monitoring. These are the questions that monitors will need to answer before starting out on the monitoring process.

• Section 8: The issues which human rights monitors may want to look at when conducting a monitoring visit. The section is a guide to the prompt questions presented in 30 Parts within Section 9 and describes how the questions refer to the CRPD in each Part of the data collection.

• Section 9: A list of prompt questions to be used during data collection. The questions are presented in 30 Parts. Monitors may like to have this with them on monitoring visits.

Contact person for further information

Kristian Wahlbeck
Research Professor
Tel: + 358 29 524 7300
E-mail: firstname.lastname@thl.fi