Social Workers Who Design: trauma-responsive design and design of care

Rachael Dietkus is a social worker-designer. Her practice, research, and writing at the intersections of social work values, trauma-responsive principles, and care-focused design research methods. Rachael is the founder of Social Workers Who Design and an active member of the Design Justice Network and the Social Work Futures Lab. Since September 2022, she has served as a Digital Services Expert in Design and Social Work and a Trauma-Informed Practice Subject Matter Expert with the United States Digital Service, a design and tech unit under the White House. 

In this episode, Rachael reflects on the different civic and public interest roles she has had over the last twenty years to explore how social work and design are intrinsically connected in her practice. She explains how she encountered trauma-informed design and more recently trauma-responsive design. She stresses the importance of language, of care, of intentionality and relationality.

To learn more about Rachael's work, follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachaeldietkuslcsw/

and check the Social Workers Who Design website: ⁠https://www.socialworkerswho.design⁠

To learn more about the topics we discussed:

'Trauma-Informed Care: A Sociocultural Perspective' / ⁠⁠https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207195/⁠⁠

Social Work Futures Lab / ⁠⁠https://www.socialworkfutureslab.org⁠⁠

Racism Untaught / ⁠https://racismuntaught.com⁠

Some of the references Rachael's made in the podcast:

• Desmond Patton's / 'Applying Reflexivity to Artificial Intelligence for Researching Marginalized Communities and Real-World Problems' / ⁠https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/7607e8e6-db3b-45c6-87c5-516e8e67ba08/full⁠

• Resmaa Menakem / ⁠https://resmaa.com⁠ + ⁠https://onbeing.org/programs/resmaa-menakem-notice-the-rage-notice-the-silence⁠
• Karen Treisman's 'Trauma River' / ⁠https://media.churchillfellowship.org/documents/Treisman_K_Report_2018_Final.pdf⁠

• AJ Singh's 'Justice Sensitivity is the Cure, Not the Sickness' / ⁠https://ajs4dlg.substack.com/p/justice-sensitivity-is-the-cure-not⁠

Credits:

Conception, host and production: Anne-Laure Fayard

Sound design & Post-production: Claudio Silva

Music & Art Work: Guilhem Tamisier