Abstract In developed nations childcare attendance is an integral part of early life for most children. Provision for sleep in this context is commonly enacted as a single mandatory period of lying down. Yet, younger children often require multiple sleep-times, and many older children will cease to require daytime sleep. Waking of sleeping children and distress among non-sleepers is often observed with resulting adverse effects. The benefit of intervention to improve responsive sleep-time practices and attendant child outcomes has not been tested. We examined the feasibility of conducting a gold standard RCT of an educator-focused professional development intervention. Childcare settings ( n = 6) were screened for alignment with inclusion criteria: (1) mandatory sleep-time and (2) no prior participation in a sleep professional development program. An active waitlist control design with randomisation was employed. All educators in intervention services participated in professional development with outcomes measured at baseline and 2–8 weeks post-intervention. Practice outcomes were changes in observed educator practices and interactional quality. Child outcomes were actigraphy measured sleep patterns, parent reported sleep problems and observed child interactions and engagement in childcare setting. Compared with controls, educators in the intervention group showed preliminary improvements in responsiveness to child sleep needs. Higher quality of individual interactions between children and their educators in sleep-time and between children and their peers post sleep-time were seen. No indication of differences in children’s 24-hour sleep patterns or sleep problems was identified, likely reflecting short duration of post-intervention outcome measurement. A large-scale randomised control trial with longer post-intervention duration is warranted, recognising inherent implementation challenges.
Staton et al. (Fri,) studied this question.