Dr. Susan Stern

Susan Stern is Associate Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and cross appointed to the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. Dr. Stern’s scholarship focuses on child and adolescent mental health and delinquency; family adversity; parent engagement; community-based implementation of evidence-based parenting and family therapy models; and common elements and change mechanisms in evidence-based practices.

Committed to community collaborative and interdisciplinary research, she currently is the Principal Investigator of a SSHRC grant of parent engagement in children’s mental health and evidence-based practice, is a co-investigator of the IPS-C, the Canadian arm of an international survey on parenting practices and parent preferences for accessing support, and is partnered with Kinark Child and Family Services on research examining treatment fidelity and the role of peer supervision across multiple EBPs in an  implementation science study. She has held a research scientist appointment with Child Development Institute, a collaborative partner on evidence-based parent engagement and parenting program research.

With a particular expertise in evidence-based parenting interventions, she was PI of an Incredible Years implementation study across Toronto early learning centres and consultant on research examining the impact and cultural acceptability of Triple P for Aboriginal parents in Canada. She brings a rich practice background to her work and teaching; prior to entering academe, she was director of child, youth, and family services in a community mental health center.

Dr. Stern is currently the Co-ordinator of the “Children and Their Families” specialization. She co-ordinates and teaches “Social Work Practice with Families”, the specialization core course on evidence-based practice with families, and teaches “Advanced Clinical Practice with Families of Children & Adolescents:  From Prevention to Intervention.”

She is the faculty liaison to the Ontario School of Education Studies (OISE) and teaches “Parenting: Multidisciplinary Perspectives,” a seminar jointly offered with the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at OISE.

 She has previously taught “Contemporary Issues in Working with Children and Their Families,” the “Social Work Practice Research Seminar “and “Advanced Social Work Research.”