I am an experienced quantitative researcher in social care.  Drawing from my local authority background, I specialise in the assessment of performance and operations of social care organisations and their service delivery to adults. My research interests include: the analysis of routinely collected data; issues facing the adult social care workforce; and community support services for older adults and individuals with dementia.

With funding through an NIHR career development award, my Ph.D., “Learning from a Pandemic: Adult Social Care Beyond COVID-19,” aims to understand the pandemic's impact on the adult social care workforce and its future implications. As a quantitative researcher, my expertise is in designing, collecting, managing, and analysing primary data, particularly survey data, and using various secondary data sources, including individual-level service receipt data and large-scale official data collections in the social care sector.

I am a specialist social care adviser for the NIHR Research Support Service and it’s national Specialist Centre for Social Care. 

I completed a BSc in Geography at the University of Manchester in 2002 and worked as a Performance Management and Policy Officer within a North West local authority.  I undertook strategic performance monitoring and management, employing a data-driven approach to inform best practices and to enhance service delivery in Adult Social Care.  I was awarded a scholarship for an MSc in Social Research Methods and Statistics, achieved at the University of Manchester, where I then moved to an academic research career.

My research has covered the breadth and complexity of the adult social care sector. Presently, my focus is on the design and use of routinely collected social care data and methodological developments in data collection within the sector. My PhD, submitting in September 2024, explores the impact of the pandemic on the adult social care workforce and the implications for the future of the sector.

I am proficient in survey design approaches and tools for primary data collection and managing various secondary data sources, including individual-level service data and official collections. I apply advanced data analysis techniques such as multivariate modelling cluster analysis, longitudinal analysis, and cost-effectiveness evaluations.  I am proficient in cost utility analysis in the social care sector.   

BSc. (Hons.) (2:2) Geography, The University of Manchester, 2002

MSc. (with Merit) in Social Research Methods and Statistics (part-time), The University of Manchester, 2006

Thesis Title: Educational Attainment and Economic Disadvantage: Exploring the Ecological Fallacy

PhD in Public Health (in progress), The University of Manchester, 2024

Thesis Title: Learning from a Pandemic: Adult Social Care beyond Covid-19

My research areas include:

• The application and analysis of routinely collected social care data
• Investigating adult social care workforce issues and the development of workforce data collection methodologies
• Exploring community support for older adults and individuals with dementia
• Developing methodologies for measuring risk, frailty, and social vulnerability in older populations and evidencing inequalities
• Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of interventions through robust methods to assess the efficacy and efficiency of interventions.