This paper reports on in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with 69 disabled people in England and Scotland, and with 28 key informants from infrastructure organisations in the voluntary and statutory sectors, about the impact of COVID-19, and measures taken to control it. Participants were recruited through voluntary organisations. As with everyone, the Pandemic has had a huge impact: we discuss the dislocations it has caused in everyday life; the failures of social care; the use of new technologies; and participants' view on leadership and communication.We conclude with suggestions for urgent short term and medium term responses, so that the United Kingdom and other countries can respond better to this and other pandemics, and build a more inclusive world.

Health and social care integration has been a long-term goal for successive governments in Scotland, culminating in the implementation of the recent Public Bodies (Joint Working) Scotland Act 2014. This laid down the foundations for the delegation of health and social care functions and resources to newly formed Integrated Joint Boards. It put in place demands for new ways of working and partnership planning. In this article, we explore the early implementation of this Act and how health and social care professionals and the third sector have begun to renegotiate their roles. The paper draws on new empirical data collated through focus groups and interviews with over 70 professionals from across Scotland. The data are explored through the following key themes: changing cultures, structural imbalance, governance and partnership and the role of individuals or "boundary spanners" in implementing change. We also draw on evidence from other international systems of care, which have implemented integration policies, documenting what works and what does not. We argue that under the current framework much of the potential for integration is not being fulfilled and that the evidence suggests that at this early stage of roll-out, the structural and cultural policy changes that are required to enable this policy shift have not yet emerged. Rather, integration has been left to individual innovators or "boundary spanners" and these are acting as key drivers of change. Where change is occurring, this is happening despite the system. As it is currently structured, we argue that too much power is in the hands of health and despite the rhetoric of partnership working, there are real structural imbalances that need to be reconciled.

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Direct payments have been heralded by the disability movement as an important means to achieving independent living and hence greater social justice for disabled people through enhanced recognition as well as financial redistribution. Drawing on data from the ESRC funded project Disabled People and Direct Payments: A UK Comparative Perspective, this paper presents an analysis of policy and official statistics on use of direct payments across the UK. It is argued that the potential of direct payments has only partly been realised as a result of very low and uneven uptake within and between different parts of the UK. This is accounted for in part by resistance from some Labour-controlled local authorities, which regard direct payments as a threat to public sector jobs. In addition, access to direct payments has been uneven across impairment groups. However, from a very low base there has been a rapid expansion in the use of direct payments over the past three years. The extent to which direct payments are able to facilitate the ultimate goal of independent living for disabled people requires careful monitoring.