Dinithi Wijedasa

Dinithi is a Senior Lecturer and Centre Head at the Children and Families Research Centre within the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. Dinithi has a background in developmental psychology, secondary data analyses and statistics. Prior to joining the University of Bristol in 2007, Dinithi was invited by UNICEF and the Ministry of Health of the Government of Sri Lanka to lead a study to adapt and standardise a developmental screening test, which established the first ever standardised developmental milestones for Sri Lankan children aged 0-6 years in Sri Lanka.

In just over 16 years, she has been involved in 16 research studies on children living in out-of-home care placements. Eight of these studies have used administrative data analyses as a methodology.

Dinithi has extensive experience of conducting research on children living in out-of-home care placements and of management and analyses of large datasets including Census microdata, longitudinal survey data and longitudinal national administrative data on children in care. She is one of the first academic researchers in the UK to be given access to all national-level, longitudinal administrative datasets on children in care, held by the Department for Education and the Welsh Government. Dinithi is an ONS approved researcher and a previous recipient of an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award.

Dinithi is currently leading three research studies on mental health of children in State care in England:

Study 1: Long-term trajectories of mental health of children in State care in England
Study period: 2019-2023
Research lead: Wijedasa, D.
Funder: ESRC

Study 2: MH-CAT: A longitudinal survey of the mental health of children in State Care in England through the COVID-19 pandemic
Study period: 2020-2023
Research lead: Wijedasa, D.
Funder: ESRC

Study 3: Using linked administrative data to explore mental health service provision for children in State care in England
Study period: 2020-2023
Research leads: Wijedasa, D., Macleod, J. & Boyd, A.
Funder: The Nuffield Foundation