An introduction to the law for human services, the fourth edition of Integrating Human Service Law, Ethics and Practice offers an overview of the legal processes encountered in practice. The text offers an accessible discussion of law and ethics to provide students with an understanding of the Australian legal landscape and an understanding of human service ethics.

The new edition provides an inclusive approach to teaching law and ethics to students, easily demonstrating how to translate the theory into practice. Written by an expert author team, the book provides a unified understanding on the relationship between law, ethics and human practice.

KEY FEATURES

• Improved book navigation, including a table in the introduction relating populations and issues to the relevant chapters
• Fully updated law and human services material, with ‘Law in Practice’ boxes highlighting relevant and interesting cases
• Chapter objectives, Reflect and Law in Practice boxes, and Key Points for Practice prepare students to understand the connections between legal processes and ethical considerations.

Foreword
List of Figures and Tables
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Publisher Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
About this book: Its origins and aims
Our audience
Defining the human services
Terminology
Assumptions about legal knowledge
Book structure: Finding material
Positions reiterated and elaborated


Part 1: Relationship between Human Service Practice, Law and Ethics

2. Law and the Human Services: Together and Apart
Client problems and beyond
Integration: Who, what and why?
Human service client, worker, and agency issues
Intersection and overlap between law and human services
Human services in a risk society
Law and human services: An uneasy coexistence

3. Law, Ethics, and Other Factors in Decision Making
Integrating legal and other imperatives in human service practice
The exercise of decision- making power and administrative law principles
Influences on human service worker decision making
These influences in interaction
Making integrated decisions in practice
Part 2: Legal Obligations, Rights, and Regulationof Human Service Workers
4. Professional, Business, and Employment Matters
Behind the scenes of service delivery
Professional profile
Taking care of business
Contract law
Contracts and the human services
Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)

5. Managing Information
What does ‘managing information’ mean?
Interaction of human service practice, ethics and law
Collecting (or acquiring) and amending personal information
Recording information
Storing information
Permitting or denying access to information
Legal imperatives to protect information
Legal imperatives to disclose information or permit access to it
Electronic and digital records and communications
Whistleblowing

6. Courts, Tribunals, and the Human Service
Images and anxieties
Courts, similar bodies, and dispute resolution
Scope of human service activity in courts and tribunals
Range of courts
Range of tribunals
Ombudsmen and complaints bodies
Court processes, evidence, and witnesses
Preparing court and tribunal reports
Preparing to appear
Giving evidence
Accompanying others attending court

7. Getting It Wrong
Accountable practice
More than a legal duty of care
Incompetence, mishaps, breaking the rules, and more
Rules and standards of conduct in the human services
Complaints and investigatory bodies
A mosaic of expectations, risks and possible outcomes


Part 3: Service Delivery: Diverse Populationsand Jurisdictions

8. Crimes and Victims
Introducing the criminal justice system
Criminal law in Australia
Assisting people charged with offences
Sentencing
Indigenous Australians and the criminal law
Young people and the criminal law
Victims of crime
Criminal law and family violence

9. Families and Children
An interdisciplinary perspective required
Child protection in Australia
Child protection proceedings
Family Law
Family law and arrangements for children
Family violence and family law
Property orders
Child support

10. Housing and Finance
The law and more
Income support
Complaints, review and appeal
Income management (IM)
Debt management
Consumer protection
Housing, homelessness and accommodation

11. Diversity and Vulnerability
Rights, needs and protections
Facilitating social well- being through law
Guardianship and administration
Mental illness
Refugees and asylum seekers
Emerging matters of vulnerability, difference and the law

12. Back to the Beginning while Facing the Future
Contradictions and volatility in the big picture
Implications for the human services
In pursuit of confidence with law and justice partnerships
Accomplished human service work and workers 
Appendix: Finding, Reading, and Citing Law Finding and reading an Act of Parliament 

How to find cases 

How to read cases Citing legislation and cases Index

Rosemary Kennedy, psychologist working in professional regulation and human service consultant
Jenny Richards, Lecturer, Flinders Law School, Flinders University

Tania Leiman, Senior Lecturer, Flinders Law School, Flinders University

Read a sample from Integrating Human Service Law, Ethics and Practice, fourth edition:

Chapter 2: Law and the Human Services: Together and Apart