A social worker who designs
Bridging design, social work and trauma-responsive practice to rethink how change is made
Dice by Two Tumbleweeds, via Social Workers Who Design on Instagram
Through conversations with passionate and mindful designers, The Design Thinking Podcast Roundtable explores various aspects of design and how it can create change and social impact. In this episode Rachel Dietkus talks about her journey across creative, academic and public service worlds. After early experiences in design, community arts and sociology, she found her way into social work and later intentionally reunited these disciplines. She founded Social Workers Who Design to empower design leaders, educators, and practitioners with thoughtful and strategic guidance on trauma-responsive design, research, and practice. Central to her approach is the belief that design must grapple with social complexity, lived experience and structural inequality, rather than focusing only on efficiency or surface-level solutions.
A core theme of Rachel’s work is the shift from ‘trauma-informed’ to ‘trauma-responsive’ practice. She argues that awareness alone is not enough: designers and researchers must actively respond through care, reflexivity and sustained ethical commitment. This means paying close attention to language, power, emotional impact and the embodied experience of participants, while remaining open to uncertainty and learning. Drawing on social work, psychology and justice-oriented frameworks, she challenges practitioners to move beyond short trainings and performative inclusion, and instead build daily practices rooted in accountability, relational care and systemic change.