About us
We have a strong track record in research that supports: wellbeing and prevention; funding care appropriately; designing effective care markets; and improving integration with health services.
The University of Birmingham is part of the National Institute for Health Research's School for Social Care Research. We also lead IMPACT, the UK’s evidence centre for adult social care, funded by the ESRC and the Health Foundation.
Research into adult social care is conducted across the three departments of the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham. These are the Department of Social Work and Social Care, the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology and the Health Services Management Centre. We work together in the Adult Social Care Cluster. Our research is broad ranging, covering different types of care services (aimed at older people, working age people with disabilities, and people experiencing mental distress). We are committed to undertaking research alongside people with lived experience of care, and have a standing Lived Experience Panel as well as project specific approaches to co-research and co-production.
Researchers who work in Adult Social Care
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Associate Professor
Head of Education, School of Social Policy
Dr Kerry Allen is an Associate Professor at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham. With a disciplinary background in medical sociology, she is interested in applied research that improves health and care services, especially for people with complex needs or long term conditions.
Her core research areas are:
- How people experience long-term conditions, ...
Research Fellow
Emily is a Research Fellow at the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) where she is working on the evaluation of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme. Prior to this, Emily was part of a research team exploring local authority market-shaping activities in social care and how this facilitates the development and access of personalised care and support.
Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Research
Harriet Clarke has teaching and research commitments to disability and social policy, and supervises doctoral research within the department. Harriet is also Head of Education for the School of Social Policy, responsible for the development and implementation of education strategy with oversight of the School’s teaching programmes. She is a member of the School Senior Management Team, ...
Lecturer in Mental Health Policy
Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton is a Lecturer in Mental Health Policy based in the Health Services Management Centre and the Institute for Mental Health (IMH).
The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) at the University of Birmingham is one of the UK's foremost centres for research, evaluation, teaching and professional development for health and social care organisations. The Institute for Mental ...
Professor of Health and Social Care
Jon is the Director of IMPACT, the UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. IMPACT has received £15m from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Health Foundation, and works across the four nations of the UK to get evidence of what works used in practice to make a difference to front-line services and to people’s lives.
Reader in Social Policy
Director of Global Engagement for the School of Social Policy
Kelly is a Reader in Social Policy based in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology. She is the Director of Global Engagement for the School of Social Policy.
Lecturer in Nursing
College Lead for Cultural Diversity
Lorna is a Registered Adult Nurse and a Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Lorna teaches on a variety of nursing modules on the preregistration programme including Public Health, Long Term Conditions and contributing to Palliative and End of Life Care teaching across the programme. Lorna also teaches on the Postgraduate Inter-professional Independent Prescribing programme.
Lorna ...
Senior Lecturer
Philip is a Senior Lecturer in the Health Economics Unit. His research interests relate to the measurement and valuation of outcomes in economic evaluation. In particular, Philip is interested in the inclusion of broader outcomes within economic evaluations of health and social care interventions and the use of the capability approach within health economics.
ORCID ID: ...
Director of Education, College of Social Sciences
Catherine is the Director of Education for the College of Social Sciences and a Professor of Public Management and Leadership in the Institute of Local Government Studies. She has a background as a policy maker and practitioner in public service and as such as a particular research interest in developing research which can deliver change within the public sector. Her ...
Director of Global Engagement for the College of Social Sciences
Professor Robin Miller is an applied academic with an international reputation in relation to integration, leadership and implementation within health and social care. He has been P-I/Co-I to over £14 million of research grants over the past decade and has published over fifty peer-reviewed articles and books.
Robin is the Joint Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Integrated ...
Professor of Public Policy and Public Management
Catherine Needham is Professor of Public Policy and Public Management. She is based at the Health Services Management Centre, developing research around social care and new approaches to public service workforce development.
Catherine’s areas of special interest include:
- Personalisation and coproduction within public services
- Social care reform
- Workforce change in public services
- Inte ...
Associate Professor in Social Policy
Director of the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM)
Louise is an Associate Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM). Her research interests focus on older people and personal finance (and personal finance-related issues), including financial security, financial advice, and the regulation of consumer financial services.
Louise’s research is strongly empirical, but against a ...
Associate Professor in Social Work
Associate Professor of Social Work
Denise Tanner is Associate Professor (Social Work). She teaches on BA and MA Social Work courses. Her areas of teaching and research interest include adult social work/social care policy and practice; social work with older people; social work skills; social perspectives of mental distress; and service user involvement in education and research.
Research Fellow
IMPACT Project Officer
Obert Tawodzera is a research fellow in the Department of Social Work and Social Care, where he is working as the project officer for IMPACT (Improving adult Care Together) which aims to increase the use of high-quality research evidence to improve and support innovation within the adult social care.
He completed his PhD which focused on how Zimbabwean migrant care workers in the UK ...
Professor of Mental Health and Social Work
Jerry is currently leading national research for the Department of Health Policy Research Programme to explore how Local Authorities (and their partners) are responding to the challenge, embedded in the Care Act, to build capacity so as to ‘prevent, reduce or delay’ the need for social care services. He is also co-investigator in the ODESSI trial led by Prof Stephen Pilling at ...
Research Fellow
Dr Maxine Watkins joined CHASM as a research fellow in July 2021. She is currently working on a research project which will develop a decision support tool that aims to help self-funders and their relatives make decisions about paying for social care.
Research Fellow
Dr Shazia Zafar is a scientist in applied health research and social science who conducts research using quantitative and qualitative methods.
She is currently exploring the impact which results from care home closure. As little evidence currently exists on the impact of care home closure, the results will provide key lessons to local governments nationally.
Her projects are both UK based ...