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THE PESA POST
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Parents, Educators/Teachers & Students in Action

May 5, 2022
BY HELPING OTHERS, WE HELP OURSELVES
An MSW intern brings her skills to the job of serving youth and experiences her own growth in the process
As an MSW intern, Blanca Carrazco came to PESA with plenty of baggage. But it’s not what you might think, because in her case, that baggage was chock-full of solid experience working with youth in a residential foster-care home, and it has served her well as a PESA caseworker helping diverted youth in the Teen Court program and as a counselor for high-school students dealing with plenty of their own life stressors.

“That experience taught me the importance of building a relationship with a client,” says Carrazco. “Also, how to manage crises, how to de-escalate, and how to stay calm, which is helpful with teenagers who are overwhelmed or upset.”

Carrazco has always known she wanted to work in some capacity with youth, though initially as a University of California Riverside undergrad, she thought that would be as a teacher. But as life events so often shape us, it was her eight years of experience at the foster-care home that led her to social work and counseling, which she is now pursuing as a grad student at Cal State University Long Beach. PESA and the youth we serve are, in turn, lucky to have Carrazco’s depth of knowledge at the ready.

One particularly rewarding case, says Carrazco, was that of a high schooler with whom she had developed a rapport through counseling. At one point, the youth revealed she had been experiencing some abuse, and Carrazco had to write up a report about it. “Initially she was upset with me, but eventually she came to talk with me again, and by the end, she expressed that she was grateful and said, ‘you know, I realized that it was important and that something had to be done. It was really great to have the space to talk about it with you.’”

Carrazco, the oldest of three daughters born to Mexican immigrant parents and the first in her family to attend college, has been able to apply her own personal experience in relating to youth with similar backgrounds. “One of my cases was excited to look ahead to having a career,” says a beaming Carrazco. “She had a vision of her future, and that’s very meaningful to me. A lot of Latinx kids are the first generation in their families to experience going to high school and to college, and they may have no one as a role model to look to for guidance. To be that for them has been a big takeaway for me.

“I learned from this internship to have a lot of empathy for teenagers,” she says. “I have learned to be a better listener, to not be judgmental. Kids already have a lot of people telling them what to do—they’re still teenagers, after all. So I have tried to empower them to make good choices for themselves.”

With plans for more counseling work in the near future and a five-year goal of becoming a therapist, Carrazco exemplifies the best of a great internship: She helps our kids and, in turn, helps herself.

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