Webwatch: Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory
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The Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory has been set up to provide better information about the health and health care of people with learning disabilities and people with autism in Scotland.

SLDO will generate and translate information into knowledge, that is designed to inform actions, practice and policy to benefit people with learning disabilities and people with autism. It aims to turn this information and data into meaningful health intelligence for practitioners, commissioners, policymakers and the wider community.

This will be achieved by:

  •     Increasing the visibility of people with learning disabilities within Scotland’s routinely collected data,
  •     Collating and presenting relevant data about the population of people with learning disabilities and autism in Scotland that is accessible to a wide audience, and by
  •     Generating high quality evidence to build understanding of the health and health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities and autism.

Funded by the Scottish Government, SLDO is led by Professor Anna Cooper and is made up of a multidisciplinary research group, drawing on expertise from medicine, public health, social sciences, and health informatics.

Professor Cooper was appointed to the University of Glasgow in 1999 to its foundation Chair of Learning Disabilities, and established the Glasgow University Centre of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. She is Deputy Head of the Institute of Health and Wellbeing and also works as an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Professor Cooper wants the Observatory to make Scotland fairer and healthier for people with learning disabilities and their families, by:

  •     Finding out the health problems people have
  •     Finding out how good or bad health care is
  •     Telling people about health and health care problems
  •     Finding ways to make health and health care better
  •     Checking if health gets better or worse over time
  •     Helping the Scottish Government, and staff who provide health and social services, to get it right for people with learning disabilities

Visit the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory here: www.sldo.ac.uk