Celia Burgos, LMSW

Celia Burgos, LMSW

Although Celia received her Masters in Social Work in 2019, she has been no stranger to the human services field as she has been working that field for well over a decade. “I began my journey into the social work world in college. I had joined a club on campus and had to complete community service hours at an adult day care. I spent a few hours with many great people that day. I remembered having conversations with them about their life and experiences and I saw how much support and care they received from their social worker. I saw how she gave them a voice and ensured that they were not taken advantage of just because they were elderly. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to become a Social Worker too.”

With every client, Celia makes it her duty to provide top of the line therapeutic support and intervention to individuals and families around an array of issues including mental health, trauma, behavioral issue, substance abuse, etc. The goal is to help people identify useful tools to use to better manage their particular problems and/or situation. 

While Celia took this job because of the rewarding stories of success, she doesn’t shy away from the many tough experiences in social work. But she reflects on one specific instance where she second thought her entire career path:

“The toughest situation I have experienced was losing a client to suicide,” says Celia. “Professional and personally I was deeply impacted. I thought, for some time, that maybe I was not cut out for this. It was tough because I thought I had failed them. I had to be evaluated about whether I had done enough or if I could have done more. The toughest part was accepting that I had not let this person down and that I had done everything I could have done to aid this person. This situation taught me a lot about myself as a professional.” Celia never forgets this experience and often leans on it for strength to try to prevent similar situations from occurring again.

Celia also acknowledges that society often times sees social workers in the negative light and as part of an entity that is always separating kids from their biological families. She actively works against this stigma every day. “We work extremely hard and take on so much as social workers because we see so much,” she says. “Yet, we are often only recognized as the person who takes people’s kids away. As social worker we are unsupported, overworked, underpaid, and have limited resources. However, people have been so jaded by that stigma (that we take their kids away) that it may be difficult to see us in a different light.”

Celia works to make sure society has a better understanding of what a social worker does in the hopes that people will see how essential they are. “I hope to someday be a part of a change in how society views mental health culturally. I have worked with so many people from different ethnic backgrounds and in most cases, mental health is something that is either denied, ignored or not spoken about. Society needs better information around mental health at different cultural levels and once we as a society understand and accept mental health, we can work together to support people with mental illness without shaming or blaming them for their mental state.”

Thank you for all of your extremely hard work Celia! Happy Social Workers Month to you and social workers everywhere!