Meet Amelia Ray- a Behaviour Analyst & ASD Services Manager at San Diego Center for Children.
A Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Board Certified Behaviour Analyst, Amelia oversees clinicians and interventionists who provide behavioural services to children in schools, homes, and the clinical setting. Being brought up in a single-parent household, she wasn’t restricted to follow the norms but instead encouraged to foster her creativity. As a result, she was always involved in some type of creative activity like dance, music and art. Even though she had to change a lot of schools throughout her growing up years because of her parent’s struggles, she never really found herself getting frustrated because of the constant change.
She decided to use it as her power instead.
After attaining her professional degree and working with several organisations and individuals, she presently works at San Diego Center for Children- “It is a nonprofit initiative that serves children and families and has been in operation for almost around 130 years. It provides a variety of behavioural and mental health services to children and supports residential, school services, individual and family therapy, in-home ABA, social skills groups and much more. An excellent organisation that truly cares for its employees and families that serve it, it is probably the most important reason why I really enjoy working here!” she says.
In the initial years of her career, she mostly felt like she did not have the answers for everything that came in her way and experienced a tumultuous amount of self-doubt. However, over the years, she has learned that it’s ok to not have all of the answers and is currently working on providing new and improved services to her clients and expanding the contracts. As a result, the organisation has had highly responsive feedback for its unique services.
In 2018, Amelia was voted an award for her value of excellence. “To me, excellence is the ability to provide the total package. It means addressing staff and client needs, providing quality of services, and adapting services to address unmet needs. One example of this was transitioning our 6-week summer camp to a virtual platform during the pandemic. We have never provided this type of delivery before and it didn’t seem possible but with a great team effort, we were able to devise a plan and it ended up being a highly successful outcome in which we provided all 6 weeks virtually,” she says.
Today, she finds herself in a place that she didn’t think was possible and her journey has taught her a lot of things indeed. According to her, even if you have moments where you doubt yourself, or you feel like you can’t, give yourself the opportunity anyway- you will truly be amazed at what you can accomplish!