Social Welfare at Berkeley: New Field Faculty

NEW FIELD FACULTY

Isela Garcia White

Field Consultant and Lecturer

Isela Garcia White is a field consultant and lecturer at the School of Social Welfare. She works closely with students focused on children and community mental health.

For the last 15 years, she has provided child and adolescent mental health services in a wide variety of settings, including the Oakland and Mt. Diablo Unified School Districts, John Muir Behavioral Health’s Adolescent Outpatient Program, the City of Berkeley’s Mental Health Department and Stanford University’s Counseling and Psychological Services. While at Mt. Diablo Unified School District, she served as a field instructor and training coordinator. She also served as a field seminar leader and field liaison for California State University East Bay’s MSW program.

A bilingual and bicultural social worker, Garcia White is dedicated to providing high-quality, effective, and culturally responsive mental health services to children and families from diverse communities. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and earned her BA from UC Berkeley and her MSW and Pupil and Personnel Services Credential from the University of Southern California.

What interested you in the position at UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare?

I loved my own experience in graduate school, and deeply enjoyed supporting MSW students when I served as a field instructor — so this position tapped into both of those joys. I also believe in creating strong learning communities that hold high standards, while also being inclusive and affirming. This position gives me an opportunity to be student-centered and put that into practice in my own way. Joining the faculty here is also giving me the opportunity to utilize my knowledge and experience in Social Work in a new way. As a UCB alumna, I was also excited about the chance to return to campus in a professional capacity.

What have you enjoyed most about working with Berkeley Social Welfare students?

Our students are highly motivated and passionate about this work — it shows in their developing practice, in their self-reflection, in their critical thinking and classroom discussions, and in their support of one another. I’ve enjoyed getting to know students, learning about their areas of interest, and supporting their overall experience in Field. It has felt rewarding to help students make real-world connections between theory and practice.

Denicia Carlay

Field Consultant and Lecturer

Denicia Carlay (MSW ‘08) is a field consultant and lecturer at the School of Social Welfare. She works closely with the MSW Title IV-E students. Prior to joining the faculty in Fall 2018, Carlay served foster and juvenile probation youth as a social worker and social worker supervisor in the field of child welfare for 10 years. While employed with San Mateo County, Carlay received service awards for her leadership and creative programming and engagement efforts with Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC). She also served as a trainer and curriculum developer for the Bay Area Training Academy.

Carlay remains dedicated to fostering hope and resiliency in ways that promote more equitable education outcomes for children with trauma backgrounds. She is is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Social Justice at San Francisco State University. Carlay earned her BA from the University of Southern California before coming to Berkeley for her MSW.

When did you know you wanted to pursue a career in social welfare?

Was there a formative experience, or a mentor who inspired you? What influenced me to pursue social welfare was my personal experiences with the foster care system. The uplifting of the voices of those experiencing the foster care system tend to be overshadowed by the compliance and mandates placed on the social workers charged with their oversight. I wanted to dismantle deficit-based narratives about foster youth and work towards changing public child welfare to truly team with and value families and their culture. That wasn’t happening in child welfare when I started this professional journey 15 years ago. Berkeley’s Title IV-E program, coupled with the blessing of a GSR (Graduate Student Researcher) appointment for Dr. Jill Duerr Berrick, provided the financial support that made it possible for me to pursue an MSW within the concentration of Public Child Welfare. Once I started working in public child welfare, I ended up there for ten years and likely would not have left if not for the opportunity to return to Cal to teach the next generation of emerging child welfare workers. I’m grateful to have the opportunities that I have been afforded and don’t take any of them lightly.

What interested you in the position at UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare?

I have a huge passion to nurture future generations of social workers, and water the seeds of culturally responsive leadership and advocacy to tackle systems of oppression that are creating increasingly inequitable outcomes for folks of color. Many of our students also have their own trauma backgrounds around discrimination, oppression, incarceration, and abuse. It’s important for their voices to not only be heard, but supported and validated within our classroom spaces as well. Being a support for those students and creating spaces of healing-centered engagement are what interest me most about my position at Cal.

What have you enjoyed most about working with Berkeley Social Welfare students? So many things: their diversity, tenacity, and charge for social justice to name a few! And their critical lens. Our students don’t let anything get past them without evaluating it from every angle. I really admire and am encouraged by their hunger for change. It feels really good to know that this is the next generation of social workers going into the field and serving populations that interface with child welfare.