Robin Steinberg & Elizabeth Keeney – Shared Roots and Shared Commitments: The Centrality of Social Work to Holistic Defense
Social workers in holistic defender offices play a fundamentally different role from
social workers in other social service settings and even from social workers in traditional
public defender offices. Holistic defense social workers are advocates, not clinicians. They
are profoundly passionate about client self-determination, social justice, and every
individual’s right to be treated with dignity and respect. While many social workers at
holistic defender offices have significant clinical skills and may have previously worked in
clinical settings, the majority of the social workers involved with holistic advocacy are also
students of policy and organizing who reject the location of problems within the individual
alone