Charitable Choice: The Challenge and Opportunity for Faith-Based Community Services

Charitable Choice: The Challenge and Opportunity for Faith-Based Community Services brings together a significant collection of resources for faith communities and social workers on the important topic of Charitable Choice. It is a resource for social work practitioners, educators, and students, for leaders in churches and faith-based programs, and for advocates for the poor.

Charitable Choice contains overviews of the Charitable Choice legislation itself and raises significant issues and questions regarding its implementation. It documents initial efforts by states to implement the law, provides examples of church involvement in community social ministry, looks at characteristics and attitudes of staff at faith-based programs, explores the experiences of volunteer mentors in social welfare programs, and it gives a rich qualitative look at how some rural churches respond to poverty and policy.

Professional social workers are in a unique position to help bring people of faith and people in need together, especially if these social workers are persons of faith themselves. This book is a resource to equip us to help others in a way that really helps.