Wes Shera

• PhD.
• Professor Emeritus at University of Toronto

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Filial piety involves the Confucian view that children always have a duty to be obedient and to provide care for their parents. Filial piety has been described as both a risk and a protective factor in depression and suicide. This qualitative study aimed to explore the role of filial piety in the suicidal behavior of Chinese women. Qualitative inte...

A cross-national qualitative suicide study was conducted by Tsinghua University and the University of Toronto with two samples of Chinese women in Beijing and Toronto. The aim of this article is to reflect on lessons learned from this collaborative study. A literature review guided the analysis. A focus group was conducted with members of both rese...

This qualitative study explored the experiences and patterns of recovery of Chinese- born women living in Canada with a history of suicidal behaviour. It explores a number of dimensions of recovery including clinical, existential, functional, physical, and social. The women described engaging in ‘‘survival’’ recovery in the short term and ‘‘thrivin...

Teaching is often a solitary endeavor, but teaching with others can enrich the educational experiences of faculty and social work students alike. This teaching note is a call to action for all social work educators to focus on the underlying tenets of the team-teaching environment as a mechanism for enriching the social work educational environment...

Many social workers with primarily direct practice experience have been increasingly moving into upper level administrative roles within their organizations. Unfortunately, many of these new leaders do not have an adequate base of knowledge and skills needed to manage human service organizations. In response to this identified need the Factor-Inwen...

In 2008, United Way Toronto (UWT) launched the Creative Institute for Toronto’s Young (CITY) Leaders, a leadership development program for diverse young people working and volunteering in the community and social service sector across Toronto, Canada. The investment in leadership capacity building provided a unique opportunity to explore the short-...

Rationale: Recent studies have highlighted higher rates of suicidal ideation and behaviour and associated themes of gender role stress in Chinese women residing in North America. However, qualitative studies, which privilege their voices in the discourse of suicide prevention and provide insight into their experiences, are lacking. Objective: To...

Human service organizations are increasingly using knowledge as a mechanism for implementing change. Knowledge emerging from many sources that may include academic publications, grey literature, and service user and practitioner wisdom contributes toward informing best practice. The question is: how do we harness this knowledge to make practice mor...

The development and implementation of recovery-oriented mental health policy and services is a current theme in the ongoing process of mental health reform in many countries. The authors describe the comparative policy work they have been doing over the last fifteen years, leading up to the current focus on the challenges encountered in the impleme...

This article describes the design and delivery of a group work course that has as its primary purpose the meeting of group work practice standards. This multisection course uses a common course syllabus and a team approach to ensure the fidelity of course implementation. The recent development of a standards-based inventory of competencies in socia...

Several job-related and organizational features make the work of community-based paid managers of volunteers distinctly different from conventional management practice. Based on self-verification (Swann & Brown, 1990) and exchange (Blau, 1964) theories, we tested a multidimensional measurement model of support specific to these managers. The dimens...

This article reviews the effectiveness of Community Treatment Orders (CTOs), a community-based treatment program initiated to improve compliance with treatment plans and address societal concerns regarding mentally ill individuals. It assesses the impact of CTOs on individuals who have participated in this treatment and addresses the question of wh...

This article reviews the effectiveness of community treatment orders (CTOs), a community-based treatment program initiated to improve compliance with treatment plans and address societal concerns regarding seriously mentally ill individuals. It assesses the impact of CTOs on individuals who have participated in this treatment and addresses the ques...

Practice and Research Together (PART) is an Ontario-based research utilization initiative, the core function of which is to distil and disseminate practice-relevant research findings to child welfare practitioners. This article addresses (a) the mission and goals of the PART program; (b) the key components of the program design; (c) the conceptual...

Suicide research on epidemiology, service utilization, and prevention strategies tend to focus on urban areas, resulting in a conceptualization of suicide that may not be applicable to rural populations. Rural areas have differing geographical, socioeconomic, political, and cultural characteristics that must be considered in the development and imp...

Ms. X" was a 29-year-old married woman living with her teenage daughter and her parents-in-law in a farming village of 700 in central China while her husband worked in a coastal city. For many years, Ms. X had experienced her in-laws as contemptuous and resentful because she had not produced a son for the family. Increasingly, she had been struggli...

As a result of the Youth Criminal Justice Act's increased focus on restorative justice, treatment, rehabilitation, and reintegration of youth, many more juvenile offenders require mental health services while resident in youth detention facilities [Youth Criminal Justice Act (2002, c.1). Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada. Retrieved September 19,...

This intent of this article is to describe a unique, Canadian-based research utilisation programme called PART (Practice and Research Together: www.partontario.org/). This innovative programme seeks to create linkages between research and practice in child welfare by promoting organisational and systemic change that increases research utilisation a...

This article describes the research capacity building efforts of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto over the past 12 years. It identifies the role of strategic planning, the process of change, and the key practices, in terms of personnel, resources, research center development, and strategic community partnersh...

This article attempts to capture the research capacity building efforts of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto over the past 12 years. It will identify the role of strategic planning, the process of change, and the key practices, in terms of personnel, resources, research centre development, and strategic community partnerships,...

This paper discusses shared origins and differences in the social work professions and education programs in the United States and Canada. Consideration is given to how the social work professions in the two countries attempt to resolve the possible inherent conflict between an emphasis on dealing with problems of individuals, with intervention app...

The need for workers to experience a sense of empowerment in the human service organizations where they are employed is essential, but insufficient. The conceptualization of worker empowerment also needs to extend beyond the organizational context toward a broader context. In this article, the authors review the construct of social worker empowerme...

The University of Toronto had the only doctoral program in social work education in Canada for many years. There are now seven programs and one under development. This article provides a description of the unique and strongest features of each of these programs and identifies a number of challenges that must be met to improve the quality of doctora...

Discusses anti-oppressive practice from both a conceptual and a fields of social work practice perspective. Much of the book can be found on Google Books.

In recent years many countries have embarked on various types of health and mental health reform. These reforms have in large part been driven by governments' concerns for cost containment which has, in turn, been driven by an increasing process of global marketization and the need to control national deficits. A critical issue in these reforms is...

For over thirty years the University of Toronto had the only doctoral program in social work education in Canada. There are now seven programs and one under development. This article provides a description of the unique and strongest features of each of these programs and identifies the difficulties and challenges that must be met to improve the qu...

In planning for the future, schools of social work need good-quality information about current and future anticipated changes which affect the nature of social work practice. A wide variety of methods are available to conduct “futures studies” to assist schools with this planning. This article reviews the international literature on futures studies...

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Increasing diversity of populations in many countries places demands on institutional structures to be responsive to the needs of minority communities. Universities, and especially schools of social work, are expected to be open to these new challenges of diversity. It is argued that inclusiveness should be integrated into the overall strategic res...

The managed care initiatives sweeping the nation are having a profound effect on the way that social workers deliver services to people with severe mental illness. Social work, with its client-focused value base and relevant conceptual frameworks, has an opportunity to provide leadership in this area. To do so, however, social workers must keep abr...

The effect of an intervention to change graduate MSW students' attitudes towards the severely mentally ill was investigated. Positive changes in attitude were observed for the students who participated in the intervention. Attitude scores of students in the comparison group remained the same. The encouraging findings of this study suggest that the...

Research concerning the care and treatment of people with severe mental illness has not been consonant with the well-established emphasis on consumer empowerment in social work and the psychiatric rehabilitation field. This article provides a set of research strategies that would help bridge the gap. We argue that research should amplify "the voice...

Schools of Social Work have a responsibility to improve teaching and curriculum relevance through what has been called institutional self-renewal. Their survival and growth often depends on these actions. This study identifies how one school of social work surveyed its major social service environment to obtain perceptions regarding: its interactio...

The Chinese educational system is being challenged to play a pivotal role in the four modernizations. In recent years much effort has been put into educational reform, but much remains to be done. The intent of this article is to discuss the role that evaluation can play in the improvement of the Chinese education system. Although it is claimed fre...

This paper identifies critical concerns in the policy and procedures used in conducting social impact assessments (SIAs). Using the case of the island of Lana'i in the state of Hawaii the authors illustrate how SIAs can be done to maximize relevance, enhance utility, and empower communities. The development project in this case involves the creatio...

This article discuss as critical themes and issues in the practice of community organisation. Using the case of the island of Lana 'i in the State of Hawaii the author illustrates how community assessment can be done to maximise relevance, enhance utility and empower communities. The development project in this case involves the creation of a resor...

This paper discusses some of the similarities and differences between Pacific-Asian and Western cultures and their influence on the construct of mental health. Culturally sensitive social work practice may need to expand from the traditional treatment perspectives of the West to ones that include mental health consumers, their families, social netw...

The impact of resort development on Lana'i island (Hawaii) was investigated through community and island assessments, surveys of households and high school students, and focus groups. Assessment results relate to economic impacts, community services, community satisfaction, quality of life, and social impacts. Recommendations are included for mitig...

The planning and development of new communities is a challenging and expensive venture. This article describes the framework and methods employed to evaluate the use of socially sensitive planning in the development of Tumbler Ridge, a new coal-mining community in northeastern British Columbia. The authors describe how a set of social principles an...

Students in education and social work traditionally display negative attitudes toward statistics, and these attitudes often impede their understanding and use of research methodology. This report evaluates the use of computerized tutorial support for elementary statistics instruction in five different education and social work courses, both graduat...