Social services, their form and frequency of use in society are a phenomenon whose significance is beyond all doubt in the present day. This paper aims to draw attention to the social and economic aspects of the social services. It outcomes from the typology of social services, analyses microeconomic properties of this goods and shows what are the causes of the necessity of special financing measures - e.g. general availability, accountability, and need to be financed systematically and without reliance on pure market mechanisms. The findings of the paper are important for the settings of the social services system in reality, where a lot of paradoxes still prevail.