Every child deserves a happy childhood, but unfortunately, many do not receive one.

A child's childhood can be filled with a variety of 'bad' experiences. While child abuse at the hands of guardians remains one of the major contributors, children can struggle with other adverse experiences as well. Whatever the negative childhood experience was, it can have a long-term negative impact on the child's health as an adult. This is due to the fact that early childhood and adolescence are highly formative years in a person's cognitive and personal development.

Here's how bad childhood experiences can affect your health for the rest of your life.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a heritable neurodevelopmental disability that is characterized by delayed or inconsistent development in social interaction and communication and a restricted repertoire of activity and interests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a higher prevalence of autism in children than ever before. Autism Spectrum Disorder is currently occurring at a rate of 1 in 59 children in the United States, an 18% increase over the past two years and a 151% increase since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first began to monitor the prevalence of ASD in 2000. Social work academics believe that increased prevalence can be explained, in part, by changes in diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution, improved awareness in the public, and increased recognition by clinicians.

In the 2004 film, The Notebook, James Garner watches Gina Rowlands, the love of his life, slip away into the isolation of Alzheimer's disease. Garner's character reflects as Gina Rowlands stares off into the space of her isolated mind:

"The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we've lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we've found each other. And maybe each time, we've been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come."

According to the latest student loan debt statistics, there are 45 million student loan borrowers who collectively owe $1.7 trillion of student loans.

"As is so often the case, what began as a creative solution to a social inequity became corrupted by greed and mismanagement," a professor of the history of social work told us. "Sallie Mae was the main facilitator when Congress created the student-loan program back in the 1970s during the Johnson administration. It was a profit-driven enterprise that essentially funneled money from taxpayers to colleges and universities. Congress envisioned it as a partnership between the government and banks to broaden the American dream of a college education for children of modest means."

One of the most diverse and rewarding career paths is social work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor, it is also one of the fastest-growing professions. While you are assisting people and society and empowering them, you must also ensure that you are managing everything properly. Case management in social work entails ensuring that all individuals' needs are met.

A recent article in Social Work Today highlights a true triumph of empathy. In Innovations: New Foster Care Initiative Spotlights Parent Advocates, Debra McCall describes the parents’ pain when social workers have to remove children from their families.

“It is never easy. We enter parents’ lives at the worst possible moment—when the children they love have been removed from their homes. At that point, parents are experiencing shame, anger, and confusion. They are frightened and frustrated by the “intrusion” of the child welfare system into their lives. And they fear losing their children permanently, perhaps because that’s what happened to a neighbor or a friend.” (Social Work Today, Vol. 21 No. 1 P.3)

Social work is filled with disconcerting moral challenges.  In child protective services, practitioners are called on to investigate reports of abuse or neglect of children. Once they have investigated the allegations and considered all relevant facts, these social workers have to make daunting decisions about whether to remove the alleged victim from their homes and find alternative housing arrangements. These decisions affect the parents, the children, and the family at large. Rest assured, social workers are aware that, even as they are trying to prevent the child from suffering abuse or neglect, someone is about to suffer. The cases these professionals are called upon to handle are rarely black and white.

The focus of social work has shifted from providing immediate support as a safety net to the vulnerable to striving for a better long-term outcome for each client. In child and family services, the mission no longer ends at removing an endangered child from a dysfunctional household but now extends to how a Child Welfare Agency might help the child grow into a productive member of society. In other words, what will be the ultimate outcome for the child?

Casework can be very demanding at times. It’s also a broad profession in terms of the situations and expectations that social workers come across.

Despite it being a challenging field, it’s also one of the fasting growing ones here in the US. This is mainly due to the high demand for caseworkers globally to counter a growing shortage, especially here in the US.

And while social services case management software can help manage the caseload to a certain extent, caseworkers need certain traits also.

Casework can be very rewarding. So naturally, as you study hard and get through tough exams and finally get to practice—you’re going to be pretty excited. And you should be because you’ll be making a real difference in people’s lives and helping them turn things around on a daily basis.

But you’ll soon find out that social work is one of the toughest jobs out there. Not only because there are real people and emotions involved, but also because it’s demanding work.

From long working hours to massive caseloads, here are a few ways to manage your early years as a caseworker.