Professor Yvonne Birks
Professor of Applied Social Care Research

Profile

Biography

Yvonne is an experienced health and social care researcher with a professional background in nursing. She manages a dynamic and growing group of researchers and research support staff who deliver a large portfolio of practice facing research to support the delivery of social care.

In 2023 she was awarded National Institute of Health and Care Senior Investigator status in social care research. In 2024 she became the National Director for the NIHR School for Social Care Research, a collaboration of 6 leading institutions in social care research across England.

She is a member of the NIHR Academy Advanced Local Authority Fellowship panel and a member of the NIHR Health technology Assessment social care prioritisation panel.

Research

Overview

Yvonne’s research centres largely on services for older people and people living with dementia, especially those that self fund their social care. Over her career she has led and collaborated on projects in excess of £25 million. She also leads an NIHR Health and Care Services Delivery Research award focusing on building research capacity in local authorities. This co-produced approach, the Curiosity Partnership, is supporting the development of research in four regional LAs in Yorkshire and Humber.

She has strong collaborative links across the UK and is part of a number of large long term initiatives including the Partnership for Responsive Policy Analysis and Research (PREPARE), the York Evidence Synthesis (YES) Group: Evidence Syntheses for NIHR, an NIHR Research Support Service Hub and an NIHR Policy research Unit for Dementia and neurodegeneration

Publications

Selected publications

ORCID

Heavey E, Baxter K, Birks Y. Care chronicles: needing, seeking and getting self-funded social care as biographical disruptions among older people and their families. Ageing and Society. 2024; 44(4):916-938. 

Gridley, K., Baxter, K. & Birks, Y. How do quantitative studies involving people with dementia report experiences of standardised data collection? A narrative synthesis of NIHR published studies. BMC Med Res Methodol 24, 43 (2024). 

Sanna Read, Ben Hicks, Emily Budden, Jacob Douglass, Amanda Grahamslaw, Elena Herrero, Gregory Joseph, Christine Kirkup, Martha Pusey, Alice Russell, Harsharon Sondh, Sharon Sondh, Bryony Storey, Georgia Towson, Kate Baxter, Yvonne Birks, Carol Brayne, Carmen Colclough, Margaret Dangoor, Josie Dixon, Paul Donaghy, Kate Gridley, Peter R Harris, Bo Hu, Derek King, Martin Knapp, Eleanor Miles, Christoph Mueller, Rotem Perach, Louise Robinson, Jennifer Rusted, Alan J Thomas, Raphael Wittenberg, Sube Banerjee, Long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of people with dementia and their family carers, Age and Ageing, Volume 53, Issue 1, January 2024, afad233.

Gridley K, Dixon J, Hicks B, et al. Standardised data collection from people with dementia over the telephone: A qualitative study of the experience of DETERMIND programme researchers in a pandemic. Dementia. 2023;22(8):1718-1737. doi:10.1177/14713012231190585

Baxter K, Gridley K, Birks Y. The role of uncertainty in planning for self-funded social care for older people with a diagnosis of dementia. Ageing and Society. Published online 2023:1-21.

Hicks B, Gridley K, Dixon J, et al. Using digital technologies to facilitate social inclusion during the COVID‐19 pandemic: experiences of co‐resident and non‐co‐resident family carers of people with dementia from DETERMIND‐C19. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2023; HICKS ET AL. - 13 of 13