Grant: Catalyst Grant: SPOR Innovative Clinical Trials (iCT)

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) are conditions that affect a person's developing brain. The range of strengths and difficulties individuals with NDDs have vary widely. Youth with NDDs often have behaviours of concern. These can include things such as violence towards themselves or others. The reasons for these behaviours can be hard to understand, usually need a specialized doctor to help treat, and can lead to many problems for the young people and their families. Sleep problems are also very common in NDDs. Poor sleep is known to worsen behaviours of concern. We know that sleep education can be helpful in other groups of youth and their caregivers. Sleep education involves teaching youth and caregivers (such as parents, grandparents) about sleep and providing practical strategies to help youth sleep. However, there is no sleep education intervention specifically for this group of youth and their caregivers. Also, we don't know if sleep education improves the youth's behaviours of concern, their sleep, and the stress levels of their caregivers. To answer these questions, we have invited youth, caregiver, and doctor partners to join our research team. Together, we will create a sleep education intervention for youth with NDDs who have behaviours of concern and their caregivers. This will help them learn about sleep problems and how to improve them. We are asking for funding to finalize the sleep education intervention. We will test our sleep education intervention with these youth and their caregivers during a doctor's appointment. We will check whether it helps with the youth's behaviours and sleep, and their caregivers' stress levels. This project will create a new sleep education intervention to help youth with NDDs who have behaviours of concern and their caregivers that doctors can use in clinic. If successful, this intervention could be used by more doctors to help youth with NDDs and their caregivers across Canada.