• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Exploring care home providers’ public commitments to human rights in light of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
  • Contributor: Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Caroline
  • Published: Emerald, 2017
  • Published in: The Journal of Adult Protection, 19 (2017) 6, Seite 357-367
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1108/jap-09-2017-0033
  • ISSN: 1466-8203
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore care home providers’ public communications covering their commitments to respecting residents’ the human rights. The discussion considers the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and a domestic legal and regulatory human rights framework.Design/methodology/approachQualitative content analysis undertaken in 2017 of 70 websites of England’s largest commercial care home providers.FindingsThere are strong value-based public commitments in the websites of many English care home providers, which may or may not be interpreted as expressing their commitments to human rights.Research limitations/implicationsResearch was limited to websites, which are public facing and marketing tools of care home providers. This does not provide inferences regarding the practical implementation of value-based statements or human-rights-based procedures or policies. This paper does not make any value judgements regarding either the public communications of care home providers or normative claims regarding human rights and care home service provision.Practical implicationsThere is a need for clarification and debate about the potential role and added value of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the UNGPs’ operating principles within the English residential care sector. Further exploration of the relationship between personalisation/person-centred care and human rights might be useful.Originality/valueThis paper introduces the UNGPs and corporate responsibility to respect human rights to the debate on human rights, personalised/person-centred care, safeguarding and care homes in England. It adds a new perspective to discussions of the human rights obligations of care home providers.