NCT06549491

A Sleep Intervention for Preschoolers in Foster Care

Development and Implementation of a Digital Sleep Intervention for Preschoolers in Foster Care

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 72 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Bradley Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Healthy sleep is critical for optimal health and development, but there are no public health interventions to support sleep for children in foster care. This proposal will develop and implement a digital public-health-level intervention to support foster caregivers in promoting healthy sleep in the young children in their care. The digital intervention approach has the potential to maximize scalability and reach to support foster children and their caregivers on a national level.

Detailed description

Participants who meet inclusion criteria via phone screen will be scheduled for a virtual HIPAA compliant Zoom enrollment visit where informed consent will be obtained using the REDCap online platform. This study focuses on evaluation of the behavioral sleep intervention Sleep Wizard, which will be designed to support foster parents around preschool aged foster children's sleep. For Sleep Wizard pretesting (N=10), participants will participate in an hour-long virtual study visit where they will access the Sleep Wizard mobile website. After accessing intervention content, they will provide quantitative and qualitative data on implementation outcomes, including acceptability, feasibility, and appropriateness. For the Sleep Wizard RCT (N=72) participants will be randomized to receive Sleep Wizard, or to the waitlist control condition using the randomization module in REDCap. They will then complete baseline measures of demographic characteristics, their behaviors and interactions with their foster child related to sleep, perceptions of foster child sleep and health, and their own sleep and health. All questionnaires will be completed in REDCap, with the exception of the baseline questionnaire on child sleep which will be completed in the Sleep Wizard mobile website for those in the intervention group. Assistance will be available to support participants and ensure completion of measures in real time. The enrollment visit is expected to take 1 hour to complete. Participants in the intervention group will then access the Sleep Wizard intervention content. Participants in both groups will complete follow-up assessments at 2-weeks and 3-months following the initial baseline assessment. Follow-up visits will occur over Zoom and will take an average of 30-minutes during which participants will repeat baseline questionnaires via REDCap. At the end of the 3-month follow-up visit, participants in the control group will be offered the intervention.

Conditions

• Sleep

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Sleep Wizard	First, foster parents will fill out the child sleep questionnaire, which will screen for behavioral and medical sleep issues. Foster parents will then complete introductory modules focused on general sleep hygiene and education. Next, they will access tailored sleep strategy modules determined by an automated algorithm based on sleep challenges identified in the sleep screening. Participants will be notified to alert the child?s pediatrician if the screening indicates the presence of a medical sleep disorder, such as sleep disordered breathing. Participants will be asked to follow recommended sleep strategies for 2 weeks, and complete short morning daily diaries on the child?s sleep from the night prior within the Sleep Wizard platform. To reinforce intervention content and enhance adherence and integrity, participants will receive appropriately timed tailored text message reminders of strategies they should be utilizing.

Timeline

• Start date: 2026-09-01
• Primary completion: 2027-08-31
• Completion: 2028-08-31
• First posted: 2024-08-12
• Last updated: 2024-08-12