When Chamese Dempsey was an undergraduate at San Diego State University (SDSU), her mentor Tamara Strohauer encouraged her to apply for the Title IV-E Program. She hesitated. Memories of traumatic experiences surfaced from her childhood—many cousins and friends her age were rapidly being removed by the Child Protective Services and disappeared from the community. She remembered the distress her grandparents went through trying to “fight” for her cousin to come home and the child welfare system just did not seem to budge. When social workers showed up at her home, they would stare at them with such seriousness and never a smile. Chamese could see the panic and distress her grandparents experienced and this remained a long-lasting memory to this day.
With help from her therapist, Chamese worked hard to process her trauma and eventually realized what a positive impact she could have as a Native to educate and advocate for the Indigenous community, and to effect positive change within the child welfare system. She applied and was accepted into the Title IV-E Program, graduated from SDSU with her MSW, and now works as a Protective Service Worker (PSW) in San Diego County.
Chamese Dempsey is a single mother with three children, Coral, Emerson, and Oceana. She is a descendant of the Paiute, Yaqui and Chippewa/Ojibwe Tribes. She says, “My great grandfather Joe Galvin who was close friends with Harry Wegeforth, the founder of the San Diego Zoo, would capture any wild animals that escaped the zoo. He would jump on his horse, catch the wild animal, and return the animal back to the Zoo.” As early as the 1940s Great Grandpa Joe would dress in regalia wearing his eagle bonnet and dress his horse in regalia and ride horseback in the original Toyland Parades in San Diego.
Chamese held the Wolf Moon Powwow Princess and the Kateri Circle Princess titles in her teens and followed the powwow trail with her grandparents dancing on weekends throughout California, Arizona and Hawaii. At 15, she started working on the Sycuan Indian Reservation under her Grandma Arlene Galvan’s lead as an assistant powwow coordinator. They coordinated and ran the Sycuan powwow for 15 years and ranked in the top ten powwows in North America for three years straight. Chamese says, “This was such an honor and where I learned so much more about cultural protocols and etiquette.”
After working for the Sycuan Tribe for 15 years, Chamese’s career path took an unexpected shift into the mental health field. She first worked at Mental Health America and then with the San Diego American Indian Health Clinic where she began doing a lot of community related work. She learned about mental health, resilience, and trauma, and began connecting the dots of adversities and historical traumas stemming from colonization. She found her passion and purpose for the mental health field and social work, and developed a five-year plan for higher education to stay focused and motivated. She attained her AA in Psychology, AS in Social Work and Mental Health Certificate at San Diego City College, transferred to SDSU and obtained her Bachelor’s in Social Work, and graduated from the MSW Advanced Standing Program at SDSU in 2023.
Chamese says, “I feel like my Native perspective provides an additional lens for this field, allowing me to understand the diversity, historical traumas, and impacts of colonization not only for the Native community, however, other communities and populations as well that have been oppressed and minoritized for many generations.”
The Title IV-E Program prepared Chamese for her career with the San Diego County Child and Family Well-Being (CFWB) Department, formally known as Child Welfare Services (CWS), in multiple ways, such as dedicated classes specific to child welfare with professors who are specialized and seasoned in this prospective field, internship placement in CFWB provided the necessary hands-on experience and knowledge, the Field Placement Course during her graduate program was extremely helpful because of Professor Shelly Paul who was a seasoned child welfare worker and very helpful in sharing tips and knowledge about the field.
Chamese says, “I feel that without the education, internship and professors directly tied to this specific field, I may have felt lost. However, these supports have made me more knowledgeable and prepared for initial Social Worker in Training (SWIT) than my peers who did not have these direct supports. Additionally, I feel like the Title IV-E Program built the necessary bridge and assisted me in developing the necessary skills to transition right into the County CWS post-graduation. I am so grateful for this bridged opportunity, because I feel that it allowed me to also network with current staff in the field. By the time I was a worker I was familiar with the programs, the staff, and the work culture which is extremely helpful, especially being a new worker.”
The most challenging aspect of Chamese’s graduate study program was being a single mom trying to navigate an education system not built for single moms. She had to navigate multiple systems, juggle her family’s schedules, cope with COVID restrictions, manage with a limited support network and overcome financial barriers due to the high cost of living. But Chamese prevailed and remained academically successful. In 2022, she was honored with the CSU Trustees' Award for Outstanding Achievement
As a single mother, having to remain unemployed while going to school was very challenging. Chamese applied for and was awarded multiple scholarships that helped her remain successful in continuing her education—the SL Scholarship which followed Chamese from San Diego City College into her last semester of the MSW graduate program, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Consuelo W. Gosnell Memorial Scholarship, the CSU Board of Trustees scholarship mentioned above, and the Title IV-E stipend. Chamese was forever grateful for these awards. She says, “Although being awarded multiple scholarships while being fully financially responsible for two of my kiddos was far from easy, I managed to financially survive.”
Chamese is looking forward to gaining the necessary skills as a Protective Services Worker (PSW) with CFWB. She plans to apply for supervision so she can gain hours towards her licensure as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). Her focus right now is in the field of child welfare and she is looking forward to whatever opportunities and experience it will bring her. She says, “My motivation to work in the County Child Welfare Services is to learn and understand the field, laws and policies so that I can better support the community and most importantly those families that I will work with. I am open and excited to see what my journey within child welfare brings me and I look forward to a future here.”
Her advice for incoming Title IV-E students? “If you are going to commit to the Title IV-E Program, it's important to remain fully committed and allow yourself to be open-minded to all that you learn from the classes and the internship itself. It is important to trust the entire process. Sometimes it's hard to understand the outcome when you haven’t arrived at the finish line, so trust the combined classes and internship process. Also, I feel it's important to learn to set professional boundaries, even while being an intern as this will benefit you when you start working for the agency.”
