Home > Children & Young People > Special Educational Needs & Disability (SEND) >

Sleep in children and young people

Checked: 03-06-2025 by Jenny Henry Next Review: 03-06-2027

Principles of Management

Sirona provide support for children and young people with sleep difficulties for Bristol, North Somerset and South Glos patients.

Sleep Advice

There are a variety of useful sleep resources for parents and GPs on the Sirona care & health sleep page

The Health Visiting Service and the School Nursing Service offer a package to help establish good sleep patterns.

The Health Visiting Service (for under 5s) and School Nursing Service provide information and support about sleep for children, young people and families

Referral to Community Paediatrics

Children and young people with challenging sleep patterns that have had an assessment for neurodivergence may be referred via the SPE form for consideration of medical management of sleep with melatonin.

Before referral the following is required:

Before melatonin is considered evidence of good sleep hygiene needs to be in place. This includes good routines and boundaries around use of electronic devices/screens.
Family or young person have engaged with a sleep support package from public health nursing (Health visitor or school nurse) and put any changes into place.
There is a two week sleep diary Sleep Diary For Kids – The Sleep Charity and information about sleep routines given with referral.

Melatonin and sleep

Melatonin can be helpful for children with delays in sleep onset. It is not so helpful for night-time wakening.

Melatonin has a low side effect profile for short-term use. Side effects from long-term use are not known. More information about Melatonin’s role in sleep and more sleep supporting resources can be found in Sirona’s Melatonin leaflet.

Melatonin monitoring within community paediatrics

Children that have been started and continued on melatonin within community paediatrics will be reviewed annually (sometimes under shared management with GPs).

If melatonin management is the only reason that a child is open to community paediatrics, a new referral would be required if assessment around a different condition is being requested.

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.