social services
Community support programs
Social services are government-provided programs that support people's welfare—assistance with housing, food, healthcare, child protection, and similar needs.
The term covers both the programs themselves and the agencies that administer them: She works in social services.
Someone who needs social services requires help meeting basic life needs, often due to poverty, disability, or family crisis.
- food stampsSubsidized grocery purchasing vouchers
- food bankNonprofit distributing free groceries
- foster careSupervised substitute parenting
- public assistanceGovernment help for poor
- welfareComfort and prosperity
government assistance · caseworker · counseling · healthcare · poverty alleviation · kinship care · charities · crisis intervention · welfare check · early intervention · child protection · caregiver · case management · case file · child advocacy · at-risk youth · childcare · referral
- social serviceswelfare office, case workers, job training, counseling, SNAP benefits
- government functionslaw enforcement, national defense, tax collection, public safety, judiciary
- mutual aidteamwork, helping, sharing, lending, cooperation
- public assistancefood stamps, welfare office, public housing, cash aid, disability benefits
- youth welfareyouth welfare, youth protection, child welfare, child protection, foster care
- assistancehelp, help desk, aid, helpdesk, assistance
social servicescharitable giving
Donating to help others
private sector · commercial services · religious charity · mutual aid · philanthropy
social servicesself-reliance
Depending on oneself alone
self-sufficiency · personal responsibility · bootstrapping · rugged individualism · independence
social serviceslaissez-faire economics
Minimal state economic involvement
austerity · welfare cuts · privatization · deregulation · trickle-down economics
social, society, sociable, services, socialism, antisocial, socialist, socialize, unsocial