WHO AND WHAT are the human services and what mishaps and misdeeds characterise them? This chapter examines the human services, the actors and the actions that contribute to the shadow world, to set the stage for an approach to the law and legal cases in later chapters. The ideals that, in theory, underpin and guide the operations of the human services are given in overview, including the people and circumstances that contribute to breaches of the ideals and possibly the law, and the law's response. Finally, the range of human service breaches, mishaps and misdeeds is discussed. A typology demonstrating the interface between these actions and the law (introducing legal concepts that are significant in legal liability) is proposed as a mechanism for bridging human service and legal understandings of wrongdoing.

THE ARENA – HUMAN SERVICES AND IDEALS

The term ‘human service’ (also ‘community or social welfare services’ or ‘social care’) suggests a domain in which human needs are serviced. Human needs are many and varied. In the human services there are also a variety of service systems, forms of service delivery, professions and occupational groups, staffing services, service recipients and agencies.

There are multiple definitions of human services (eg Lyons 2001; Zins 2001; Meagher and Healy 2005; Mehr and Kanwischer 2008) with the boundaries expanding or contracting according to the positions of the commentators.