NIHR SSCR Annual Conference 2025

Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 May 2025

The Milner (formally Principal Hotel), York

Conference theme: Building partnerships and making connections in social care

We are delighted to announce that the 16th NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR) Annual Conference will be held in York in May 2025.

The SSCR conference brings together researchers and a broad range of key partners, collaborators and people with lived experience to share evidence and on-going research in social care practice.

The conference provides a valuable opportunity to make connections and hear about leading social care research including SSCR’s commissioned studies and the broader NIHR programme offer. 

Call for abstracts

Abstract submissions for consideration are welcomed from across the full breadth of social care research and eligibility to submit is not limited to researchers/ institutions who are members of the current phase of the School. We are particularly keen to receive abstracts from completed work from the third phase of the School for Social Care Research (2019-2024) where no previous opportunity to present has been available.

Abstracts from researchers at all career stages (including PhD students) are encouraged, as are submissions from across the Three Schools programmes where significant social care elements are evident.

All submissions will be peer reviewed and selected for oral presentation (15 mins, plus 5 mins Q&A), lightning talk (5 mins, max three slides) or poster presentation. 

Peer review will take account of:

  • Relevance to the conference title and theme
  • Originality and creativity of the approach
  • Stage of the research
  • The impact of the study on social care policy, practice and services
  • The impact on people accessing care services, their families and carers 
  • Quality and rigour.

Key dates

  • Call closes – 24 January 2025 (17:00 GMT)
  • Acceptance notifications – w/c 3 March 2025

Abstracts should be submitted via the online abstract submission form.

If for any reason you cannot access or complete the online form, please email us at sscr@york.ac.uk and we will share a word version of the form.

Any questions? Please contact us at sscr@york.ac.uk and we’ll get back to you.

Programme and registration

The outline programme will be published along with the registration link in December 2024.

This event is free to attend and places are limited so please save the dates in your diary and book early when the registration link is circulated to avoid disappointment.

To receive the registration link directly to your inbox when it goes live, please sign up to the SSCR mailing list.

Bursaries

We are pleased to be able to offer a very limited number of bursaries to enable researchers outside of the SSCR membership (especially early career researchers and PhD students, practitioners and people with lived experience of social care) to attend the SSCR Conference. Priority will be given to those who are presenting work as a presentation, lightning talk or poster. 

There are fifteen bursaries in total, five per group noted above. All bursaries cover one night’s accommodation in York plus reasonable travel costs (maximum value per bursary = £300). We are unable to cover subsistence.

Information about how to apply for a bursary will be made available when the registration opens in December 2024.

Outside of these bursaries, we are unfortunately unable to cover costs associated with attending the conference.