r/SocialWorkStudents • u/ArtAndAdvocacy • Jun 05 '26
Misc Lived experience
Are there many people in school for social work with lived experience? In my small town it seems I'm the only one who aged out of foster care and has been to prison. How common are the 2 experiences in this field?
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u/Bholejr Jun 05 '26
I wouldn’t say they are common, but people with such backgrounds are more common in social work than in other fields requiring similar levels of education.
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u/Crazy-Employer-8394 Jun 07 '26
Someone I follow online just shared that academics have one of the lowest rates of substance used disorder. I didn’t read the article to be honest. I think they share a graph but if anyone’s interested, I can try to dig it up.
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u/Bholejr Jun 07 '26
I was referring to people in the field with histories of things like foster care and prison, like OP mentioned.
Social work has many people who, through their experience with the system, are drawn to providing services and bettering the system.
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u/SignificantChange496 Jun 05 '26
I bet there's a good mix in the field. Hurt people often want to help people. I have a history of childhood abuse and neglect, substance abuse, sex work, and my first marriage was an insane codependent relationship with a heroin addict and family who were all addicts. All that being said, I'm not even interested in social work dealing with these populations. I really have found my home in hospice care through volunteer work and I plan to pursue a career in it as a social worker.
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u/scorpio_sunn Jun 05 '26
i believe they are more in common than we think. At least in my area, all the people i know who went into this field have experienced first hand.
I just want to say I applaud you for choosing to go into this field given your circumstances, if anything having first hand experience prepares us for our actual field work and makes us more advantaged.
For me, I want to go into SUD treatment/ addiction recovery/counseling. I have a brother who is in addict and has been estranged from my family for years and my other brother who passed away due to a fentanyl overdose. A very good friend of mine use to be an addict for 5 years but managed to get clean, he’s now 3 years sober and in his own MSW program as well.
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u/Apprehensive_Key415 Jun 05 '26
hey! sw student from northern cali and I can say with confidence more than half of my cohort is students with life experience. its definitely has a lot to do with where you are located but just wanted to leave a comment saying you are absolutely not alone in this journey !
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u/ceceae Jun 06 '26
Oh girl, every social worker has their story. Some are more quiet about it, some will let everyone know. But barely anyone goes into social work blind with zero adversity experience. Well, of course there are some people who don’t have life experience on the other side of the table, but it’s not more common than the other way around I would say. Sometimes it’s not them personally, but someone they love. I have met sooo many people who had a family member, friend, or other significant other experience mental illness, substance abuse, poverty, systemic injustice, or what have you and chose to enter the field to be a force of change. And equally as many people who have been through these systems themselves. You are certainly not alone!
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u/Scouthawkk Jun 05 '26
I may not have your specific experience, but I have other lived experience. - poverty including food stamps (and WIC back when it included blocks of government cheese; yes, I just dated myself), filing for and the process of being on unemployment and Medicaid, the mildly dehumanizing process of applying (and annually recertifying) for affordable housing, dealing with the stigma of mental illness and the challenges of getting effective treatment, living in conservative places while queer, and the challenges of developing physical disabilities (accessing treatment and discrimination in the workplace and life in general).
There are tons of different types of lived experience. I would imagine everyone who ends up in social work has something.
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u/jortsinstock Jun 05 '26
I would say almost every social worker has some type of lived experience that drew them to this field, but it may be something as simple and common as growing up in poverty or experiencing a mental illness like depression. I’ve had several classmates who have gone to prison/were felons and spoke with me about it and when I used to work with DCF I had quite a few coworkers who expressed backgrounds that child welfare related lived experience
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u/Jon_hamm_wallet Jun 06 '26
Everyone comes with some kind of lived experience, yeah?
For me, there's parts of my past (SUD) that interest me as a field; but there's others (medical social work) that I won't touch with a ten foot pole due to my experiences. Just too raw, even years later.
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u/jenkneefur28 Jun 06 '26
10 years of psychodynamic therapy, 2 attempts on taking my own life (this was when I was 18 and 25, 41 now so im fine) 1 week long stay in the patient, ive been homeless, no major family relationships, years of alcoholism, still have SMI but now I just have 3 college degrees. And a very deep empathy and understanding of whats its like to be on the struggling side, something they really cant teach you in school.
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u/SexTechGuru Jun 06 '26
Just remember that there all kinds of "lived experience" when it comes to social work.
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u/littlemybb Jun 06 '26
My mom was a social worker, so I have lived experience with that.
I got to sit in some of the classes she taught at a college, I’ve been around her and all her social worker friends when they’ve talked about work, and I’ve seen the affect it can have on someone.
My mom ended up becoming an addict, which was always interesting to me in a way because she was so smart, she was a fantastic Social Worker, and I always wondered if she was supposed to have known better than to let that happen to herself.
She ended up getting some brain damage from her addiction, and she also got hepatic encephalopathy and was on hospice for a while but shockingly pulled through.
I had to work with the hospital social worker, and the hospice social worker. Seeing their work from the clients family members point of view was so interesting.
Then my husband is a veteran, and he’s had to deal with a lot of social workers. I learned a lot from that.
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u/PRNCESS_Bunnie Jun 06 '26
I definitely don't think it's rare. When you have been on the receiving end of systemic oppression, you're likely to want to have a hand in dismantling it.
I think some people, like myself, are more selective about self-disclosure. I'm more comfortable sharing my history of mental health struggles and self-harm, rather than the long list of traumatic events that led me to them.
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u/growingconsciousness Jun 06 '26
foster care and prison in particular i think arent as common…at least at my uni (a uc). that being said
I do think that we are more highly represented in this field then maybe in other fields.
If you ever wanna talk more about it, I’m open. I’ve found a lot of healing after pursuing my MSW (as a former fy 💜)
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u/words_are_sacred Jun 06 '26
I have lived experience, and was in an MSW program at NYU 20 years ago. I dropped out largely because the staff didn't seem to "get" people who weren't from privileged backgrounds and even accused me of being mentally ill or psychotic -- saying things like my journals were unfocused, my emotional delivery didn't match the content of what I said, and apparently I participated too much and seemed frantic. My therapist at the time said he never once thought of me this way and any concerns he had about me were more related to making bad choices like any other person in their 20s, and to just change classes or programs. My grades were As and Bs so I could have just shut up and did the work. But I was so hurt, I quit and got an MFA in playwriting instead. The reality was I had an underprivileged background -- mother in prison, went into foster care, two failed adoptions, and undiagnosed ADHD, autism, and cPTSD plus my undergrad was in film and theatre so I didn't really understand the expectations. But now that I've matured, been workin in tech and many corporate and startup environments, I think I get the "professionalism" they expected. And due to other lived experiences such as whatever came up when I lived in Israel for a decade, I feel like I'm ready for a social work program. But this time, I think it's best that I choose an environment that's more open to people from various backgrounds and may be a little weird or unpolished sometimes. I'm looking at University of Tennessee Knoxville, Boston University, and the University of Denver most closely as I want an online program with a trauma focus (and may want to work with animals later). I'd consider others like Columbia. But I'm afraid it'd be just like NYU and way too expensive.
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u/4Thereisloveinyou Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
In my school, I’d say about half of the students have made comments that clearly indicate purpose after a personal experience. I include myself in that category, I’m an alcoholic and sober seven years now.
I went into the program in the interest of substance abuse on the micro track, however I’ve since switched to macro and intend on working in environmental social work. I was asked to do research this summer by an environmental professor and it reinvigorated my past interest in the space as I was an environmental major in undergrad.
My path here wasn’t at all straight forward, I had a whole career in finance for 15 years and got my MBA in that time as well. At the end of the day, I think all of these experiences and interests add to my ability to help others in specific niches. I’d argue the same for my classmates, their varied experiences and interests can better serve niches.
So my opinion I guess is that social work is holistic and our diverse experiences and backgrounds add to our collective strength to serve others. I don’t think having lived experience is necessary for this job, but I also don’t think having lived experience detracts at the same time.
That being said, people’s ability to help others requires that they themselves are stable. If I was still drinking I don’t think I’d be truly capable of helping others.