Social workers are well-equipped by experience and education to play a pivotal role in death penalty mitigation teams. They offer expertise in researching complete social histories, providing for people under threat of execution, and helping those individuals cope with that threat. The social worker's primary role is to develop the client's story through an extensive empirical inquiry into the person's life. An equally important role for social workers is to work with the multidisciplinary defense team to ensure that the client's life story becomes a part of the defense. This article, through a case example of a condemned prisoner, examines the mitigation team concept, focusing on the social work role.
Infant death has extreme emotional and symbolic effects on parents and health care professionals who face the moral and ethical aspects of life and death decisions, complicated by government ideology. Social workers can help with understanding the resulting dilemmas and suggest possible interventions.
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