Another case of "as I suspected"..

From my limited contact with social workers, I had always suspected this was true, but never really had seen it confirmed:

Such stories are common – many social work students have traumatic histories that have led them to pursue that particular career choice.  ....

Social work students have a much higher incidence of various forms of childhood trauma than students of other disciplines. A 1993 US study found 22% of social work students reported childhood sexual abuse compared to 2% of business students.

The article argues that it is a problem that some people with convictions cannot go on to be social workers:

... studies have found lived experiences to be helpful in a range of social work fields. These include addiction-treatment programs, mental health, domestic and family violence, and working with sex workers.

But the link used to justify that claim is to one study of a pretty esoteric social work study:

A peer-led mobile outreach program and increased utilization of detoxification and residential drug treatment among female sex workers who use drugs in a Canadian setting.

 I remain to be convinced that too many social workers coming from a background of, say, childhood physical or emotional abuse, is actually a good idea.   The problems I can see with it is that their personal experience could bias their decisions in cases too close to their own, and the psychological harm  from abuse can take (it would seem) decades to get over, with some people never quite recovering.

It's good that people want to help see that others don't go through what they have, and it's not as if past trauma should disqualify from getting into this work.  But I don't think it obviously helps the profession if too many are there with that sort of background.