Just days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a unique, unprecedented fund established by Congress to compensate families who lost a loved one on 9/11 and survivors who were physically injured in the attacks. Those who participated in the Fund were required to waive their right to sue the airlines involved in the attacks, as well as other potentially responsible entities. When the program was launched, many families criticized it as a brazen, tight-fisted attempt to protect the airlines from lawsuits. The Fund was also attacked as attempting to put insulting dollar values on the lives of lost loved ones. The families were in pain. And they were angry. Over the course of the next three years, Feinberg spent almost all of his time meeting with the families, convincing them of the generosity and compassion of the program, and calculating appropriate awards for each and every claim. The Fund proved to be a dramatic success with over 97% of eligible families participating. It also provided important lessons for Feinberg, who became the filter, the arbitrator, and the target of family suffering. Feinberg learned about the enduring power of family grief, love, fear, faith, frustration, and courage. Most importantly, he learned that no check, no matter how large, could make the families and victims of 9/11 whole again.

Currently there is an enduring and changing meaning of social work in a world where new crises are being confronted and new opportunities are arriving in the evolving context of social work and the related disciplines. There is a question on how to manage the transformation of social work both productively and creatively during this global shift. Practitioners and educators can experience a tragic disorientation when confronted by the diversity and depth of these crises endured and can face doubts about their role in social work throughout all these changes and difficult situations. Alternatives to this disorientation, a comfort with uncertainty, and a capability to take risks need to urgently be developed on a professional and personal level for success in the evolving field. Through historical lens and a review of policies and value-based approaches, the recontextualization of social work can be explored. Practical and Political Approaches to Recontextualizing Social Work explores practical and political ways in which social work practice has been reconstructed. Chapters identify this recontextualization of social work and how it is changing, adapting, and transforming the profession along with providing the potential implications for the profession. This book grants insight on the reconstruction of social work on the personal and interpersonal level ("case" work) and also on those intending to impact social work on the local/global environment level in all dimensions: politically, economically, socially, and ecologically. In addition, the book includes a shift from the present short-term and micro/personal view to a future and much broader and encompassing perspective and practice vision. This book is essential for social workers, practitioners, policymakers, government officials, researchers, academicians, and students who want to learn more about the recontextualizing of modern social work in a shifting global environment.

Funding Philanthropy investigates Dr Barnardo's work and philanthropic 'empire' as early manifestations of promotional and branding mechanisms in the mid- to late-Victorian period, processes that would seem commonplace by the mid- to late-twentieth century. Barnardo possessed a strategic sense of what would excite people's interest and pity, as well as a seemingly unfailing capacity to package and promote evangelical philanthropy on behalf of children, the nation and the Empire. Thus, the book explores Barnardo as creative promoter and 'showman,' a savvy entrepreneur in an evangelical context that overtly mandated against privileging business principles generally, and the practice of direct appeal specifically. To manage the business of philanthropy, Barnardo operated as narrator, orchestrator, and showman, depending upon artfully constructed bodies, images and stories as imperatives for emotional engagement and collective participation. Funding Philanthropy offers new knowledge to anyone interested in Victorian history, conceptualising children, literary modes, and marketing practices. The book also considers how Barnardo's conception of charity is closely aligned with principles of unconditional hospitality, precisely at a moment in time when the English were intent on centralising philanthropy and on meting out support according to measures Barnardo regarded as punitive and unchristian. Part One explicates how institutional branding evolved according to the properties associated with the metaphor of the 'open door'; Part Two elucidates how narrative devices associated with fiction raise both affect and funds; Part Three concentrates on how Barnardo exploited strategies associated with dramatic performance in public spectacles, despite his adamant strictures against the theatre itself. Discussion burrows down to elucidate such events as highly ritualised Annual General Meetings, child picnics, as well as ubiquitous 'bazaars' and self-denial drives. Extensive research in Barnardo's vast archive of periodical publication for children, youth and adults and the wider public press underpin the discursive analysis.