Healing Moral Injury to Better Support System-Involved Youth (SIY)

Luke Pacha, MA, M.Div.

Training Description

Moral injury refers to an individual’s psychological, emotional, and/or spiritual response to being involved in or exposed to something that goes against their values. Originally coined to describe the aftermath of soldiers witnessing, failing to prevent, or perpetrating actions that go against their sense of morality, moral injury is a phenomenon often common for child welfare workers who may be obligated to make decisions that violate their sense of right and wrong. Moral injury causes distress, contributes to compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, and can impact the health of system-involved youth (SIY) and those who support them. In this training, participants will identify four characteristics of moral injury, five sources of moral injury for those who support SIY, four socioemotional impacts of moral injury, and outline four types of moral injury healing. Participants will leave with one resiliency-building practice in each of these four…