le to its clientele, particularly in the critical area of child protective services: "If society requires social workers to intervene in the venerable institution of the family, it must provide at least qualified immunity" (Alexander, 1995, p. 653).
Granted, the number of claims against human services professionals is increasing, but the number is still relatively small when compared to those of health care professionals. Successful malpractice suits against social workers, for instance, are rare. Currently about two thousand malpractice lawsuits are filed against social workers annually (Loewenberg & Dolgoff, 1996, p. 30). The NASW Insurance Trust, which sponsors malpractice insurance for its approximately 60,000 members, records that between 1969 and 1990, only 634 liability claims were filed against members (Reamer, 1995, p. 596). These claims reflect a wide variety of allegations, but the largest claims categories involved "incorrect treatment" and "sexual impropriety," each involving about 18 percent of claims (Reamer,
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