Jeff Thornborrow
Soon after, Jeff began expanding on his clinical expertise; working as a CYMH therapist (first in the office setting and then in a community-based practice that specialized in more intensive services for complex cases). Jeff utilized multiple evidence-based practices while offering therapeutic services to children, youth, and their families including individual modalities (Narrative Therapy, Solution Focused Brief Therapy [SFBT], Cognitive Behaviour Therapy [CBT], and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy [DBT]), and group therapies (Coping Cat; Stop Now and Plan [SNAP]).
Jeff also has experience in child welfare services including intake and assessment, conducting investigations, and managing an investigation and ongoing services team.
Teaching and Research:
Jeff has taught from the local to the international stage on topics such as the grieving process in children, youth justice strategies, and the impact of mental health issues on individuals and families for both community agencies and multiple post-secondary institutions. Specializations include mental health in children and youth, child rights, individual and group therapy modalities, leadership practices in the human services field, and trauma and attachment issues as they pertain to adjudicated youth.
In research, Jeff’s doctoral work, titled Exploring Attachment Bonds between Kindergarten Students and Educators: A Creative Appreciative Inquiry, explored the emotional relationships built within the kindergarten classroom between children and teachers. Other areas of specialization include children and youth as carers for parents living with young onset dementia, rights of children within research, children and youth mental health, social work leadership, adjudicated youth and past trauma experiences, and child protection services.
Current Research:
Title: A Realist Evaluation of Rare Dementia Support: Peoples, Spaces, Places (Co-Investigator)
Methodology: Interpretative approach, realist evaluation
Funding: Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) – $743000
RDS Canada is a support community for people living with a rarer, inherited, or young onset dementia and affected family members. The overall aim of this study is to scale RDS Canada support delivery to improve access and uptake across geography, strengthen our evidence-informed model for diverse families and family structures, and enhance capacity for the provision of accessible and inclusive supports. Although our evaluation is specific to the delivery of RDS Canada, we believe many of the insights generated will be relevant to all people affected by dementia and other support systems.
Completed Research Projects:
Title: Exploring Attachment Bonds between Kindergarten Students and Educators: A Creative Appreciative Inquiry
Methodology: Appreciative inquiry and arts-informed research
Status: Defended June 2024
This community-based research will contribute to the field of knowledge in sustainable education by following the call of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to have children’s voices heard. Adding children’s voices to the discourse on the topic of attachment bonds between kindergarten students and their education team (teacher and Early Childhood Educator [ECE]) is rare in the literature capturing them in an action-based methodology utilizing arts-informed methods of data collection has not yet been empirically studied.
Title: Multigenerational Support for Families Affected by Young Onset Dementia (co-investigator)
Methodology: Interpretative Approach, Multiple Methods
The overall aim of this small-scale proof of concept study is to explore multi- and/or intergenerational support for people affected by rare and young onset dementia. Our interest is to (1) initiate a more detailed understanding of the impact of a rare and young onset dementia diagnosis on youth (aged 12-17), young adults (aged 18-24) and parent (s) of the person living with dementia, including adaptation processes; and (2) explore modes of direct support that are age or generation specific and/or intergenerational, and responsive to change and support transitions over time.
Funding:
Title: A realist evaluation of rare dementia support: Peoples, spaces, places (Co-Investigator).
Amount: $746080
Grant: Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR)
Research team: Sullivan, M.P. (Chair; Principal Investigator), Williams, V. (Principal Investigator), Hoben, M. (Co-Investigator), Crutch, S. (Co-Investigator), Tierney, S. (Co-Investigator), and Thornborrow, J. (Co-Investigator) (2024-2027).
Title: Multigenerational Support for Families Affected by Young Onset Dementia (Co-investigator)
Amount: $7000
Grant: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Institutional Grant – Explore Grant (SIG)
Research team: Sullivan, M.P. (Chair; Principal Investigator), Williams, V. (Principal Investigator), and Thornborrow, J. (Co-Investigator)
Peer Reviewed Publications:
Thornborrow, J. (in writing). Learning to be cared for and safe: Building attachment between educators and kindergarten children. Psychology in the Schools.
Thornborrow, J. (submitted). Voices through art: Assent and participation of young children in education research. Journal of Early Childhood Education.
Thornborrow, J., & Gosse, D. (2020). Utilizing comics in arts-informed appreciative inquiry: Untapped potential when conducting research with children. Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education, 11(2), 114-120.
Book Chapter:
Gosse, D., Thornborrow, J., & Janz, K. (2023). Mentoring a new generation of arts-based researchers: From inception to fruition. In B. Bickel, R. L. Irwin, & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Reflections on Arts Based Educational Research by Authors of Outstanding Dissertations. Springer Publications.
Conference Abstracts:
Sullivan, M. P., Williams, V., Thornborrow, J., McGee, J., Webster, C., Larkman, D., Krzywania, M., Hume., E. (Submitted: 2025 October 23-25). A tale of three communities: Community-led knowledge sharing for rare dementia support [Paper presentation]. Canadian Association on Gerontology. Montreal, Canada.
Sullivan, M. P., Williams, V., & Thornborrow, J. (2025 July 28). All in the Family: Multi-generational support for families affected by rare dementia [Poster presentation]. Alzheimer's Association International Conference. Toronto, Canada.
Thornborrow, J. (2025, January 3-7). Creative education research: Appreciating child participants’ voices through art [Paper presentation]. IAFOR (International Academic Forum) International Conference on Education. Honolulu, United States.
Sullivan, M. P., Williams, V., & Thornborrow, J. (2024, June 17-20). Experiences of the children of people diagnosed with Young Onset Dementia [Paper presentation]. Canadian Association for Social Work Education Annual Conference. Montreal, Canada.
Thornborrow, J. (2024, June 17-20). Learning the ABCs of safety and care: Seeing curriculum as attachment building [Paper presentation] . Canadian Association for Social Work Education Annual Conference. Montreal, Canada.
Thornborrow J. (2022, October 16-19). What does that mean? Informing young children of service [Poster presentation]. 7th Annual Meeting & Conference of the Society for Social Work Leadership in Health Care, Nashville, United States. https://sswlhcam.memberclicks.net/
Gosse, D., Thornborrow, J., & Barrow, D. (2021, April 28). Adapting methodologies during the pandemic using digital and arts-informed research in the PhD dissertation: A dialogue between supervisor and supervisees [Oral presentation]. Canadian Association for Graduate Studies 2nd Virtual Symposia. https://cags.ca/cags-virtual-symposia-2021/
Thornborrow J. (2020, November 8–11). Arts-informed appreciative inquiry in social work: Art as an ethical way to engage child participants [Oral presentation]. SWESD World Conference, Rimini, Italy. http://www.swesd2020.org (Conference canceled).
Thornborrow J. (2020, May 29–June 4). Arts-informed appreciative inquiry: Untapped potential when conducting research with children [Presentation session]. CSSE Conference, London, ON, Canada. https://csse-scee.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CSSE-Program-Final-1.pdf (Conference canceled).
Thornborrow, J. (2019). Leading social justice? How supervisors in clinical social work settings define and encourage staff to engage in social justice [Paper presentation]. Canadian Association for Social Work Education. Vancouver, Canada.
Invited Talks and Other Presentations:
Williams, V., Thornborrow, J., Duguay, A., & Sullivan, M. P., (2024, January 25). “He’s still my dad” - Experiences of young people with a parent diagnosed with young onset dementia [Oral presentation]. Young Onset Alzheimer's Disease (YOAD) Webinar. Rare Dementia Support Canada. North Bay, Canada.
Thornborrow, J. (2023). From big world thinking to their world thinking: How I shrank my research to grow my PhD experience [Invited talk]. Nipissing University’s PhD Residency. North Bay, Canada. July 11, 2023.
Thornborrow, J. (2022). Ascending to assent: Rising to the challenge of informed practice and research with young children (2022, February 16). Nipissing University’s School of Social Work Presents Research Series. North Bay, Canada.
Thornborrow, J. (2020). Exploring attachment bonds between kindergarten students and their teaching team: An arts-informed appreciative inquiry [Invited talk]. Nipissing University’s Graduate Studies in Education Seminar Series. North Bay, Canada. February 12, 2020.