Nel Groenenberg

Nel Groenenberg is a fulltime Professor and Coordinator with the Social Service Worker Gerontology Program at Sheridan College. Nel has lived and worked in Brampton for the past 32 years. Their frontline Social Work practice has included working with stroke survivors, caregiver groups, grief support ,trauma counselling in various settings including: community, social service and counselling agencies.

Their most recent publications include: Mostly White, Christian, and Straight: Informational and Institutional Erasure of LGBTQ and Ethnoculturally Diverse Older Adults on Long-Term Care Homes Websites and the Hindi Dementia Toolkit in collaboration with the Alzheimer Society of Peel. Their other research interests have focused on the use of expressive arts with persons living with dementia and elder abuse prevention strategies. They also developed tools to work with ambiguous loss and elder abuse. Nel Groenenberg has presented at the Ontario Gerontology Association, National Institute for the Care of the Elderly (NICE) ,Canadian Coalition for Seniors' Mental Health, and the Ontario Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse. They have presented research and facilitated workshops internationally with the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and with Holocaust Survivor conferences. Nel has been a Community Ambassador with the Regional Diversity Roundtable and acts as a community advisor with Brampton Arts Organization (BAO). They have been a core member of Equity Mobilizing Partnerships in Community (EMPaCT) , a novel and scalable patient partnership model co-designed to centre the voices of diverse community members and build capacity for equity-promoting patient-oriented decision-making in healthcare for the last two years.

Nel's greatest passion comes to life using expressive art, movement and meditation to build community and create opportunities for dialogue working towards decolonialization, equity, diversity and inclusion.