Sleep Counsellors
Sleep Counsellors are mainly professionals who are experienced in working with families and carers of children with additional support needs. They are drawn from Health, Social Work and Education, and are employed by local authorities and Health Boards. We are enormously grateful for the time and dedication of our Sleep Counsellors, and one of our aims for the future is to make sure that Sleep Counselling is included in their job descriptions, so that they can incorporate it into their work, and not have to do it "on top of" a full caseload.
Some of our Sleep Counsellors are parents who have been through difficulties themselves, and have been able to sort them out with the help of Sleep Counselling.
Sleep Counsellors have a six-day intensive training course. It looks at detail at the processes involved in sleep and different kinds of sleep disorders. Using a cognitive and behavioural perspective it examines how children with additional support needs develop poor sleep patterns, and how much of this is learned behaviour. It teaches specifically adapted techniques to help parents and carers, and the importance of including them as the "expert" in their child's behaviour. Trainees hear from parents and Sleep Counsellors in what it is like to devise and implement a sleep counselling intervention. The course uses role-plays to give Sleep Counsellors practise of the skills they have learnt.
Training courses are run twice-yearly throughout Scotland.
For information on Sleep Counsellor Training Please visit the Sleep Counsellor Training section.
In addition to intial training, we run continuing professional development which include seminars on topics such as autism on specific topics such as autism and sleep, respiratory difficulties, Cerebral Palsy, and Epilepsy.
Sleep Counsellors work on a multi-professional basis. Usually they work in pairs, drawn from different professions, which helps to make sure that a sleep problem is fully assessed and understood.
