Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System: A Call for Epistemic Justice

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Wendy Haight (Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus, Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) Linda Kingery (Adjunct Social Work Instructor, Adjunct Social Work Instructor, University of Illinois-Urbana)

Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System

A Call for Epistemic Justice

Wendy Haight (Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus, Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities), Linda Kingery (Adjunct Social Work Instructor, Adjunct Social Work Instructor, University of Illinois-Urbana)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
18 November 2025

Age groups: adolescents; Child welfare

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.

By: Wendy Haight (Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus Professor and Gamble-Skogmo Chair Emeritus University of Minnesota Twin Cities), Linda Kingery (Adjunct Social Work Instructor, Adjunct Social Work Instructor, University of Illinois-Urbana)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 717g
ISBN: 9780197682005
ISBN 10: 0197682006
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 18 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.