The Humanistic Perspective as a Lighthouse in Disability Support

This open access book addresses a central challenge in disability support: how can people with disabilities receive the assistance and guidance they need while retaining the opportunities to identify what matters to them, make meaningful choices, and shape their own lives? It examines how immediate and functional needs can be met without losing sight of the person’s voice and developing sense of self.

To address this challenge, the book draws on humanistic philosophy, introduces humanization as a paradigm shift in disability support, and presents the Holistic Support Model. Alongside advances in rights and inclusion, humanization shifts the focus from overcoming disability and promoting conformity toward recognizing and supporting each person as a unique and authentic human being, with a developing sense of self, personal voice, autonomy, and direction in life.

The Holistic Support Model translates these ideas into an integrated framework of humanistic assumptions, theoretical principles, and practical tools. It provides guidance for how support can be understood, planned, and provided in everyday life.

The model grew out of the author’s three decades of practice, leadership, teaching, and research. Across these settings, a persistent gap remained between advances in rights and their realization in everyday support. Functional goals, risk management, and organizational demands remain important, but the book shows how they can serve, rather than overshadow, the person’s own direction in life.

Drawing on the experiences of people with disabilities, families, and professionals, the book develops new conceptual distinctions, typologies, and developmental pathways. These include new ways of understanding autonomy, personal meaning, developmental challenges, and relational processes such as developmental dialogue. Together, these contributions may enrich thinking not only in disability support, but also in the broader study of human development and supportive relationships.

The Humanistic Perspective as a Lighthouse in Disability Support is a resource for professionals in social work, special education, rehabilitation counseling, psychology, and health care. It also addresses researchers, organizational leaders, policymakers, advocates, people with disabilities, and families, offering a basis for practice, theory development, and policy that places recognition of the humanity within each person at its heart.

Ran Neuman, PhD is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Social Work at Zefat Academic College in Israel. He also serves as Professional Director of Kfar Tikva, a community for people with disabilities, and as Head of the Academic Center for Integrating Knowledge and Practice in the Field of Disabilities, a joint initiative of Kfar Tikva and Zefat Academic College.

For nearly three decades, Dr. Neuman has worked in a range of roles in disability services, including direct practice, program development, staff training, organizational leadership, academic teaching, and research. 

His professional path has been shaped by close engagement with adults with disabilities and by a sustained commitment to strengthening the quality, depth, and responsiveness of support services. His work focuses on the development of holistic frameworks, practical tools, and professional approaches that support adults with disabilities in cultivating autonomy, identity, and personal meaning.

His distinctive academic contribution lies in positioning intellectual and developmental disabilities as a central area of inquiry within social work, while training future generations of professionals to integrate humanistic, research-based, and practice-informed approaches in this area.