This article reports the results of a review of the research evidence related to joint working in the field of adult health and social care services in the UK. It explores whether recent reforms to joint working have met the objectives set by policy‐makers. The review followed an established methodology: electronic databases were searched using predetermined terms, abstracts were screened against inclusion criteria, studies that met the criteria were read in full and assessed for inclusion and data were extracted systematically. The findings of the review suggest that there is some indication that recent developments, in particular the drive to greater integration of services, may have positive benefits for organisations as well as for users and carers of services. However, the evidence consistently reports a lack of understanding about the aims and objectives of integration, suggesting that more work needs to be done if the full potential of the renewed policy agenda on integration is to be realised. Additionally, while the review acknowledges that greater emphasis has been placed on evaluating the outcome of joint working, studies largely report small‐scale evaluations of local initiatives and few are comparative in design and therefore differences between ‘usual care’ and integrated care are not assessed. This makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of UK‐based integrated health and social care services.

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Research shows that lack of car ownership is associated with poorer health. It is often assumed that the reason for this observed relationship is that access to a car--or not--reflects access to household assets. Consequently, lack of car ownership is used as a standard marker of low socio-economic status. However, little attention has been paid to the experience of carlessness in the context of disadvantaged lives. This paper argues that "no access to a car" is not only an indicator of low socio-economic status but of walking as a mode of transport. These arguments are illustrated by data from a study of 30 low-income mothers with young children. Although walking is promoted as both an excellent and inexpensive form of exercise, these data suggest that reliance on walking can have negative effects on the welfare of families. The paper draws on qualitative data to describe the ways in which carlessness restricts access to health and social care resources such as food shops, health-care services and social networks. It also explores the impact of walking on the well being of mothers and their day-to-day relationships with children. This is compounded by walking through areas that are neglected and depressed. The paper concludes that strategies to reduce social exclusion must recognise the contradictory health effects of walking and aim to regenerate the physical fabric of social housing estates as well as improve public transport options.

This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio-economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in general, are multi-factorial. The findings, however, also illustrate how the ways in which questions about health and illness are asked shape people's responses. In the survey reported on here people had no problem offering explanations for health inequalities and, in response to a question asking specifically about area differences in health experience, people living in disadvantaged areas 'constructed' explanations which included, but went beyond, individualistic factors to encompass structural explanations that gave prominence to aspects of 'place'. In contrast, within the context of in-depth interviews, people living in disadvantaged areas were reluctant to accept the existence of health inequalities highlighting the moral dilemmas such questions pose for people living in poor material circumstances. While resisting the notion of health inequalities, however, in in-depth interviews the same people provided vivid accounts of the way in which inequalities in material circumstances have an adverse impact upon health. The paper highlights ways in which different methodologies provide different and not necessarily complementary understandings of lay perspectives on the causes of inequalities in health.2 Jennie Popay, Sharon Bennett, Carol Williams et al.