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Objectives: Although an extensive amount of research has been devoted to models defining cultural competence of healthcare professionals in short-term care, there is unclarity about the cultural competencies that professionals providing lifelong care and support should have. The current study aimed to explore which cultural competencies are used by these healthcare professionals, and whether these competencies enabled them to make cultural adaptations to their regular care practices.

Design: To investigate cultural competencies and cultural adaptations, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with eight professionals who provide lifelong care and support to individuals with intellectual disabilities. Five cultural competencies were explored: awareness, knowledge, skills, motivation, and encounters.

Results: A thematic analysis of the interviews revealed that professionals providing lifelong care and support used all cultural competencies in their care practices. Moreover, our analysis suggested that these competencies could be categorized as either practical or analytical cultural competencies. Although these competencies were conditional in order to make cultural adaptations to care practices, the presence of cultural competencies did not automatically lead to these cultural adaptations. Conclusions: All five cultural competencies were used by professionals in lifelong care and support. Our analysis revealed that both practical and analytical cultural competencies were essential in providing culturally sensitive lifelong care and support. We additionally suggest that the cultural competence of professionals is necessary, but not sufficient, for making cultural adaptations to lifelong care and support for individuals with intellectual disabilities. In many cases, other factors also played a role in a professional’s final decision to adapt their care practices.

Conclusions: All five cultural competencies were used by professionals in lifelong care and support. Our analysis revealed that both practical and analytical cultural competencies were essential in providing culturally sensitive lifelong care and support. We additionally suggest that the cultural competence of professionals is necessary, but not sufficient, for making cultural adaptations to lifelong care and support for individuals with intellectual disabilities. In many cases, other factors also played a role in a professional’s final decision to adapt their care practices.

Background: Rehabilitation personnel need to be sensitive to the cultural aspects that constitute the environment of a disabled child’s family life.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to gain insight on how families experience parenting of disabled children and how the families experience the support provided by the rehabilitation system in Malawi.

Method: An anthropological field study combining interviews and observations was conducted in a rural district of Malawi in 2011. Permission was granted to follow four families, and this study presents the stories of two families, whose children have severe disabilities. We used phenomenological and narrative analyses to make sense of the stories.

Results: The findings indicate that families with disabled children invest time and emphasise care for their disabled children. They feel enriched by their experience despite challenging situations with little support from the rehabilitation services. High standards of care demonstrating positive and moral attitudes have earned these families respect in their communities. Storytelling has created an opportunity for the families to understand and interpret their challenging situation with inherent contextual meaning.

Conclusion: This study shows that families with disabled children draw on cultural and structural strengths that rehabilitation professionals should be aware of in their support to mothers and other caregivers of children with disabilities.

Often located far apart from each other, deaf and hearing impaired persons face a multiplicity of challenges that evolve around isolation, neglect and the deprivation of essential social services that affect their welfare and survival. Although it is evident that the number of persons born with or acquire hearing impairments in later stages of their lives is increasing in many developing countries, there is limited research on this population. The main objective of this article is to explore the identities and experiences of living as a person who is deaf in Uganda. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 42 deaf persons (aged 19–41) and three focus group discussions, the study findings show that beneath the more pragmatic identities documented in the United States and European discourses there is a matrix of ambiguous, often competing and manifold forms in Uganda that are not necessarily based on the deaf and deaf constructions. The results further show that the country’s cultural, religious and ethnic diversity is more of a restraint than an enabler to the aspirations of the deaf community. The study concludes that researchers and policy makers need to be cognisant of the unique issues underlying deaf epistemologies whilst implementing policy and programme initiatives that directly affect them. The upper case ‘D’ in the term deaf is a convention that has been used since the early 1970s to connote a ‘socially constructed visual culture’ or a linguistic, social and cultural minority group who use sign language as primary means of communication and identify with the deaf community, whereas the lower case ‘d’ in deaf refers to ‘the audio logical condition of hearing impairment’. However, in this article the lower case has been used consistently.