Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System
A Call for Epistemic Justice
Published on 18. November 2025
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-19-768200-5 (ISBN)
Description
Child welfare systems around the world provide essential services to protect the lives of children who are abused and neglected. Yet these systems can also do great harm. These negative consequences of system involvement are primarily borne not by adults who are willfully neglecting or seriously abusing their children, but by families and communities who are struggling under generations of poverty, racism, and genocide. The harm is also to the professionals committed to helping families who find themselves in an adversarial system that, too often, compounds the problems of families and communities.
Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System presents a fresh perspective on how we can create a US public child welfare system that both protects children physically, and minimizes the psychological harm it causes to the professionals and the families they serve. This perspective emerged from the lived experiences of young people, parents, and professionals involved in the system. It also emerged from decades of on-the-ground social work practice and research experience; and from lessons learned from history, and child welfare systems around the world (African American, Indigenous, Scottish and Japanese). In this book, Haight and Kingery identify the significant psychological harm experienced by those within the US public child welfare system and consider implications for creating a more humane, just, and, ultimately, more successful child welfare system.
Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System presents a fresh perspective on how we can create a US public child welfare system that both protects children physically, and minimizes the psychological harm it causes to the professionals and the families they serve. This perspective emerged from the lived experiences of young people, parents, and professionals involved in the system. It also emerged from decades of on-the-ground social work practice and research experience; and from lessons learned from history, and child welfare systems around the world (African American, Indigenous, Scottish and Japanese). In this book, Haight and Kingery identify the significant psychological harm experienced by those within the US public child welfare system and consider implications for creating a more humane, just, and, ultimately, more successful child welfare system.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
743 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-768200-5 (9780197682005)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Wendy Haight graduated with a BA from Reed College and a PhD from the University of Chicago where she studied human development and culture through a wide interdisciplinary lens. Her focus is on understanding the experiences of children, families and professionals within child welfare systems, how cultures from around the world respond to the issue of child maltreatment, and implications for strengthening our public child welfare systems. A prolific scholar, Professor Haight has authored or co-authored 13 scholarly books, as well as dozens of peer reviewed journal articles. Professor Haight served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
Linda Kingery is an adjunct professor at the Simmons School of Social Work and the University of Illinois-Urbana. She received her PhD in Educational Psychology from Walden University, her MSW from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her BSW from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Linda has over 30 years of field experience, working in a variety of settings that include a rural mental health center, her own private practice, and a state child welfare agency as an Advanced Child Protection Specialist. Her research and teaching interests focus on child welfare as direct practice and as a system and the impact of substance use disorder on families.
Linda Kingery is an adjunct professor at the Simmons School of Social Work and the University of Illinois-Urbana. She received her PhD in Educational Psychology from Walden University, her MSW from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her BSW from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Linda has over 30 years of field experience, working in a variety of settings that include a rural mental health center, her own private practice, and a state child welfare agency as an Advanced Child Protection Specialist. Her research and teaching interests focus on child welfare as direct practice and as a system and the impact of substance use disorder on families.
Content
Part 1: Introduction
1: Addressing Psychological Safety within the US Child Welfare System
2: Creating a More Compassionate, Just, and Effective Child Welfare System: Conceptual Frameworks and Methods
Part 2: Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System
3: Child Welfare in the United States from 1864 to the Present: A Comparative Case Study of the Wilson, Jordan, and Brown Families
4: The Experiences of Contemporary Parents: "Basically I Look at it Like Combat"
5: The Experiences of Contemporary Child Welfare Professionals: "How Ethical is it to Open the Floodgates When You Don't Have the Sandbags to Protect the City?"
6: "I knew the System was Broken": The Experiences of young People
Part 3: Intervening in Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System Lessons from Young People, Parents, and Professionals
7: Everyday Coping with Moral Injury: Recovery Stories of Parents and Professionals
8: Reorienting Narratives Toward Positive Development: Recovery Stories of Young People
Part 4: Preventing Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System Lessons from Diverse Child Welfare Systems
9: A "Shadow Child Welfare System" An African American Focus on Community, Relationships, and Spirituality
10: with Cary Waubanascum;Priscilla Day: Drawing on the Strengths of Tribal Nations and the Wisdom of Elders: An Anishinaabe Focus on Supporting our Relatives
11: with Sachiko Bamba;Misa Kayama: "Looking with Long Eyes": A Japanese Focus on Relationship Building with Vulnerable Families Over Time
12: with Anne Robertson: Rejecting a Crimnial Justice Model of Child Welfare: The Scottish Focus on Community Support Through the Children's Panels
Part 5: Building Toward a Just and Effective Us Child Welfare System
13: Some Reflections on Strengthening Epistemic Justice and Psychosocial Well-Being in the us Child Welfare System
1: Addressing Psychological Safety within the US Child Welfare System
2: Creating a More Compassionate, Just, and Effective Child Welfare System: Conceptual Frameworks and Methods
Part 2: Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System
3: Child Welfare in the United States from 1864 to the Present: A Comparative Case Study of the Wilson, Jordan, and Brown Families
4: The Experiences of Contemporary Parents: "Basically I Look at it Like Combat"
5: The Experiences of Contemporary Child Welfare Professionals: "How Ethical is it to Open the Floodgates When You Don't Have the Sandbags to Protect the City?"
6: "I knew the System was Broken": The Experiences of young People
Part 3: Intervening in Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System Lessons from Young People, Parents, and Professionals
7: Everyday Coping with Moral Injury: Recovery Stories of Parents and Professionals
8: Reorienting Narratives Toward Positive Development: Recovery Stories of Young People
Part 4: Preventing Moral Injury within the Us Child Welfare System Lessons from Diverse Child Welfare Systems
9: A "Shadow Child Welfare System" An African American Focus on Community, Relationships, and Spirituality
10: with Cary Waubanascum;Priscilla Day: Drawing on the Strengths of Tribal Nations and the Wisdom of Elders: An Anishinaabe Focus on Supporting our Relatives
11: with Sachiko Bamba;Misa Kayama: "Looking with Long Eyes": A Japanese Focus on Relationship Building with Vulnerable Families Over Time
12: with Anne Robertson: Rejecting a Crimnial Justice Model of Child Welfare: The Scottish Focus on Community Support Through the Children's Panels
Part 5: Building Toward a Just and Effective Us Child Welfare System
13: Some Reflections on Strengthening Epistemic Justice and Psychosocial Well-Being in the us Child Welfare System