Definition of "social service" []

• Organized efforts to advance human welfare; social work. (noun)
• Services, such as free school lunches, provided by a government for its disadvantaged citizens. Often used in the plural. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Kuwait had one of the best social service systems in the world, Faisal boasted proudly, with excellent schooling, a hospital system that would have made a Harley Street surgeon pea-green with envy, low-cost housing for people at the bottom end of the social scale, and very much more."
• "Christian humanitarianism, is going on in America, in Chicago, if you please, without leaders who write or philosophize, without much speaking, but with a bent to express in social service and in terms of action the spirit of Christ."