Re-orienting narratives of moral injury towards positive development: The experiences of emerging adults with child welfare histories

Ruth Soffer-Elnekave, Wendy Haight, Ndilimeke J.C. Nashandi, Minhae Cho, Johara Suleiman and Sookyoung Park

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: This paper is the second in a series of papers from a mixed methods study examining moral injury in childhood and adolescence as described by emerging adults with histories of child welfare involvement. This paper focuses on the ways emerging adultsmay alleviate their moral injury, grow and develop.Twenty -eight emerging adults (18–26 years) who reported exposure to morally injurious events during childhood or adolescence on a modified version of the Moral Injury Events Scale(MIES; Nash et al., 2013)participated in life story interviews. Life story analyses of psychosocial contexts considered resiliency, especially any re-orientation of participants’ narratives of moral injury away from the anomie, guilt, shame, and rage characteristic of moral injury, and towards themes such as hope, forgiveness, and gratitude. In addition, psychosocial-spiritual contexts that may support these shifts in meaning were explored through thematic analyses. Findings indicate that supportive relationships, especially with caring adults, engagement with spirituality, and access to prosocial activities provide foster youth with opportunities to re-orient their moral injury narratives, and provide a foundation on which to build towards recovery. Implications for policy, practice and research are discussed.

Keywords: Child welfare; Foster care; Moral injury; Resilience; Positive psychology; Emerging adulthood; Narrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740923001172
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:149:y:2023:i:c:s0190740923001172

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.106922

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().