Áine Kelly is a Care Experienced Research Officer at the Rees Centre. Her research interests focus on understanding and promoting the physical and mental health of children and young people in public care. Áine completed her DPhil with the Rees Centre in 2022 where she used mixed methods (including creative methods with young people) to look at factors associated with the ability of the care system to meet the health needs of young people in care.
Áine was recently awarded a Spark grant from the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care to assess the feasibility of implementing a co-produced supplementary health measure for young people in residential and foster care. Áine is also part of the team working on the Future of Care research project with Become to co-design a new tool to measure care leavers success. She is also working with the Medical Sociology & Health Experiences Research Group at the University of Oxford to explore care leavers’ transitions to independence, which will be published on Socialcaretalk.org for prospective care leavers, educators, services providers and policy makers.
