What is a Sleep Coach?

What is a sleep practitioner or coach and how can they help your family?

A sleep coach is an individual who has qualifications in providing behavioural sleep support. They will have knowledge and understanding about sleep and sleep issues. They work and support families to get children to sleep better. This is done by the sleep coach doing an assessment, writing a sleep plan and a review of the sleep plan. Good sleep coach look at the family as a whole unit, listen to parents, provide individual support plans and ongoing support.

There are some things you might want to think about when picking a sleep coach.

Is the sleep practitioner or consultant listening to your family? Do they take into account your belief, parenting style and your child's stage of development?

Find the right sleep coach for your family. When looking at sleep practitioners it is useful to think about what sleep issue you want to resolve, what do you want from a sleep coach someone to listen, gentle or accountability.

What qualifications and training does the sleep coach have? How do they keep up to date with ongoing training?

There is no regulatory board for sleep practitioner/ coach at the moment. Ask to see coach qualifications and where they have trained. Some training courses are for certain ages 1- 18 or have specialised in areas such as ASD and sleep.

As new research and development into sleep as published, good practice also changes. So keeping up to date with changes, best practice and regular training is important.

What will the ongoing support be for your family?

A good coach will offer a free initial chat. Use this time to also find out what support will be ongoing. Do they provide a certain number of catch up sessions or do they offer a review of the plan?

Do you understand what methods/ strategies the sleep practitioner/coach uses in the sleep plan?

Most sleep practitioner/coach will use scientific, evidence based behaviour approaches to tailor support for your family. There are different methods and strategies that might be used. Make sure you have a good understanding of what these practices are and if they work for your family.

There are lots of sleep practitioner/coach out there. Finding out that is the right fit for your family is so important. Before you start that a think about whether you have ruled out any medical issues that might be affecting sleep including certain types of medication.

All sleep plans will require you and your family to be committed checking behaviour and habits. Is this the right time or would it be better to start plans at a different time eg the holidays.

Look out for the next post or check out starlightsleep.co.uk