"Where a white legal professional might see stats, I see people. Because, after all, the systemic issues that affect my clients have also affected me."
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It's not every day that an Advocate team is nominated for recognition by the statewide defender association---let alone nominated five times by five separate people! But that's what happened in Pennsylvania this week, when the Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania send out the message below to their statewide network of defender attorneys, social workers, mitigation specialists, investigators, and other everyday heroes:
We thank everyone for the nominations submitted to recognize outstanding work from our social workers, social services folks, investigators, and mitigators. Our winner is a group of five folks - the amazing Delaware County PD's Partners for Justice Advocates Evie Gentile, Gabe Maggio, Magdalena Blaise, Sophie Cloarec and Christina Howard!
Partners for Justice is a non-profit that trains and places non-attorney Advocates to provide case navigation and wraparound support at Public Defender offices throughout the country. Evie, Gabe, Magdalena, Sophie and Christina were nominated by Investigator Alyssa Biederman with supporting submissions from Delco Chief Chris Welsh, First Asst. Lee Awbrey, Taylor Dunn and Kate Bates.
Delco PD staff laud the group's dedication, empathy, tireless high-quality work and client impact and also enjoy working with them, describing them as a group of responsible, caring, bright, independent, dynamic individuals.
According to Taylor, "The advocate team has been with us since August, they are made up of 5 recent college graduates and are working with us via Partners for Justice. I honestly can’t say enough about how impactful their work has been to our most vulnerable clients. On a daily basis they are able to provide clients with services that our office simply would not have been able to provide previously. Their compassion for, and dedication to, the clients they work with shows through in the results they have achieved in less than 6 months."
HUGE congratulations to the DelCo team---we're so proud of all you've done for your clients and for our larger collaborative defense movement!
