Staff Spotlights
The Holland Bloorview building has its own heartbeat – you can feel it the moment you come through the doors. The people within genuinely love what they do. It’s a place where hope, respect and honour all come to co-mingle and dance.
Carolynn Gludish, ambulatory care nurse and day patient program coordinator
As therapeutic clowns, our focus is to find ways to give our clients power and choice. We meet clients and families where they are. We try to engage them in fun, spontaneous and personalized play to bring laughter, lightness, joy and relaxation to what could be a stressful experience.”
Suzette Araujo, therapeutic clown
Recognizing an occupational therapist (OT)
Words cannot adequately express how eternally grateful we are for the support and kindness you have shown [my child]. You have also taught me SO much about parenting, laughing through my tears and exemplifying exceptional OT skills. [My child] and I will never forget you.”
Holland Bloorview parent
Reception is a lively place full of adventure. My colleagues are now my extended family and the children of Holland Bloorview always put a smile on my face everyday!
I want each and every child to believe that they can achieve anything they want to if they just always remember their worth.”
Joanna Miedzik, reception services
Celebrating Tracey Shepherd, director of our Centralized Equipment Pool, on her
appointment to president of executive board of the International Society for
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC).
Giving folks a way to connect, learn, work and participate is so important. AAC is my passion. You can see it through the work I’ve done and I’m really lucky I’ve had the opportunity to work in this area for so long. Now, I hope I can influence on a larger scale through my role with ISAAC and with Holland Bloorview to help make
an impact.”
Spotlight on a Holland Bloorview psychologist
We would like to thank you so much for everything you did for our daughter. She has a beautiful way of seeing things and learning that we just couldn’t unlock. You gave us ways to not only facilitate her learning at school but to understand and reveal how she thinks about things. We are lucky to have fallen into your hands.”
Holland Bloorview parent
Congratulating Dr. Elaine Biddiss, recently named Bloorview Childrens Hospital Foundation chair in pediatric rehabilitation
It’s such an honour to and privilege to be trusted with this appointment. With this chair position, I can help fuel what I like to think of as the sparks of innovation, those exciting opportunities that arise when the right team of people – families, clinicians, trainees and researchers – mobilize around a shared and need-driven vision.”
Highlighting Dr. Sharon Smile, developmental pediatrician, and her recent promotion to associate professor at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto.
What I find rewarding [in my work] is impacting one family at a time. If I can help a parent, child, youth in advancing whatever identified meaningful/ positive goals they have, whether it’s therapeutic, academic, medical, that’s rewarding, that’s success. The most rewarding thing to me is just being present, when a child or family needs you.”
Recognizing a nurse
Thank you for providing [our daughter] with great care. You gave us confidence to help [her] through her recovery, ensuring that we were comfortable. You have advocated for [our daughter] to have her own voice and speak for herself when she became able to. Through her procedure and surgery you provided care, confidence and support.”
Holland Bloorview parent
Recognizing Jessica Reid, social worker on our child development team and Stephanie Moynagh, family support specialist on our client and family integrated care team, for their support in the creation of our Family Navigation Hub.
The workshops help connect families with community providers who have expertise in addressing areas of social needs. We’re really looking at all levels of the systems that exist in the community and how to bring those providers to the families.”
Jessica Reid, clinical lead for the hub
I think healthcare is such an important environment to offer this kind of support because access to food, stable housing and all the other social needs are a huge part of our health and not everyone can access them the same way due to systemic inequities. Anything we can do to support this access is important, alongside contributing to the wider societal changes that are needed”.
Stephanie Moynagh, supporting member for the hub and CommunityCONNECT event coordinator
Highlighting Sri-Vijay Peddi, manager of decision support and analytics, and his commitment in leading and strengthening our data collection process and datadriven decision making
Data plays a key role at Holland Bloorview by facilitating insight driven decision making and strategy development, leading to improved outcomes and excellence in client care”