Humans of York: Yvonne Birks
“As an ex-healthcare professional, the situation with social care is really shocking. We have a national health service, but no equivalent in social care. Instead, things are done in 153 different ways across 153 different local authorities.”
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This week, we’re hearing from Professor Yvonne Birks, the National Director for the NIHR School for Social Care Research, who was recently made a Fellow of the prestigious Academy of Social Sciences.
Yvonne worked as a nurse for 10 years before moving into academia, where her work has been guided both by her experience in healthcare and her personal experiences.
She said: “My father lived with advanced dementia in a care home and I support my mum, who is of course aging too. I’ve seen loads of friends go through this challenge of how people age well but also get the best support they can when they need it. It's one of the things I bring to my research.
“The dynamic of how people care for their families have changed as well. We're a little bit stuck in this 1950s model of care where we all live on the same street and women don’t work.
“I think we just have a much larger need, and we just haven’t really changed the way we deliver care or think about care in the context of a significantly bigger ageing population.”
But despite this, changes in attitudes to social care and social care research in recent years have opened up new possibilities for Yvonne’s work.
“We no longer have to argue the value of social care research and that gives us the chance to really take the research forward,” she said. “The flip side is that expectations for what we deliver are much higher. NIHR expects us to demonstrate the impact of what we do. I’m all for that, as it’s always been the backbone of my own research.
“I want research that makes a difference to the people that work in social care, and the people who use services or might need to use services. That’s what motivates me and the whole team at York.”
Read more about Yvonne's achievements and see the full list of our 2025 award-winning researchers.
Professor Yvonne Birks, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Humans of York, December 2025