James is a Senior Research Fellow at the COReC (previously PSSRU), University of Kent. Since joining in 2007 James has worked on a multitude of research projects, primarily funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. These have included the evaluation of policy initiatives (e.g. the Better Fund and Personal Health Budgets).
James is currently a co-investigator in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Quality, Safety and Outcomes Policy Research Unit (QSO). The QSO is a collaboration between the Universities of Kent and Oxford, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the Picker Institute and Hull-York Medical School. Its primary purpose is to produce robust, relevant, and usable research aimed at improving the quality and outcomes of the health and social care system. He is also working in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Adult Social Care (ASCRU) which is led by Dr. José-Luis Fernandez at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC), London School of Economics.
James is a member of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) team (www.pssru.ac.uk/ascot) an outcomes measure used internationally in research and evaluation to inform long-term care policy and practice. He has been involved in the translation and cross validation of ASCOT into German and Japanese, and the development of adapted measures (ASCOT-ER, ASCOT-Proxy and ASCOT-ER (OP)).
James’ main research interests are centred around the integration of health and social care, measuring the impact of social care, and the development of adapted outcome measures for people with cognitive and communication difficulties. Recently he has led work developing evaluation methods and identifying outcomes for strengths-based approaches in social work.