When it comes to helping you sleep better, a new mattress is just the tip of the iceberg. That’s why our partnership with The Sleep Charity (formerly The Children's Sleep Charity) is so important to us.
In addition to helping raise money and awareness for a great cause, this charity partnership allows us to share great tips and helpful advice from the experts at The Sleep Charity with you.
Find out more about The Sleep Charity, how our partnership works and what you can do to support them below.
Who are The Sleep Charity?
The Sleep Charity was founded in 2012, by CEO Vicki Dawson, then known as The Children’s Sleep Charity. Vicki’s aim was to help parents and carers access sleep support. As a sleep-deprived mum herself, she knew how important it was to help others sleep better.
Since then, Vicki and her team have joined forces with Shaun the Sheep, who became the charity's sleep ambassador in 2018. In 2019, The Children’s Sleep Charity became The Sleep Charity. In 2020 they partnered with The Sleep Council, a not for profit organisation focused on helping people sleep better.
What does The Sleep Charity do?
The Sleep Charity was founded to help people sleep better and they have four main aims:
- Provide high-quality advice to deal with sleep issues
- Emphasise the importance of a good night’s sleep
- Campaign for improvements to support currently available
- Provide training for professionals so they can support people they work with
To achieve this, the charity runs regular courses to train staff members, NHS professionals and parents.
Sleep ambassadors
With an estimated 40% of employees suffering sleep issues, this course is a great way to improve the health and wellbeing of staff. The Sleep Charity will train individuals to become workplace sleep ambassadors, providing them with the knowledge and tools needed to help other team members sleep better.
Find out more about workplace sleep ambassadors over on The Sleep Charity website.
Sleep practitioners
The sleep practitioner course is aimed at professionals who are looking to support families with children over 12 months old. This course is led by experts and provides resources that allow the newly qualified sleep practitioner to deliver sleep clinics in their local communities.
Head over to The Sleep Charity website to find out more about the three day sleep practitioner course.
Sleep workshops
The Sleep Charity runs a host of workshops tailored to different professionals. These workshops emphasise the importance of sleep, how you can identify sleep issues and the practical solutions that you can offer to improve sleep.
Below are the four current workshops offered by The Sleep Charity:
- The Sleep Champion Workshop
- Sleep Tight Workshop
- A Sleep Success Workshop
- Foundation Sleep Workshop
National sleep helpline
This new service was launched by The Sleep Charity in 2021 is designed to connect people struggling to sleep with trained sleep advisors. The helpline is open Sunday - Thursday, 7pm-9pm.
For more information about the support this helpline can offer, head over to The Sleep Charity website.
If you want to call the helpline, use 03303 530 541.
How does our charity partnership support The Sleep Charity?
When we first started supporting The Sleep Charity, we ran in-house fundraising events to raise money. Our first big event was a Mattress Online Bake Off competition.
Since then, we’ve continued to donate fundraising efforts to The Sleep Charity. Our new charity partnership means we now make a yearly donation to support various workshops and training run by the charity and in-house fundraising.
How can you support The Sleep Charity?
Just like our charity partnership, there are a number of ways that you can support The Sleep Charity. Including fundraising, monthly donations and volunteering.
Donations & fundraising
Making a donation to The Sleep Charity is simple, you can choose to give a one-off donation or set up a monthly donation through JustGiving. You can also donate through Amazon Smile, at no extra cost to you - simply select The Sleep Charity when choosing the charity you want to donate to.
Volunteering
Volunteering is another great way to support The Sleep Charity, especially if you’ve already completed one of their many training courses. Volunteer opportunities include:
- Volunteer Sleep Practitioners
- Sleep Talkers
For more information on the different volunteering opportunities, head over to The Sleep Charity website.
How can you get support?
Do you struggle to sleep? Do you have children that won’t sleep? The Sleep Charity has free resources that you can access to help improve your sleep quality. These resources can be found using the links below:
How our charity partnership is helping you sleep better
Our partnership with The Sleep Charity allows us to support all of the amazing work they do. It also means we can share expert advice with you, to help you sleep better.
If you’re looking for some quick tips to help you sleep, our expert article, ‘How to get to sleep fast: 7 top tips’ in partnership with Vicki Dawson is a great place to start.
With studies showing that 80% of children with a SEND diagnosis will have sleep issues at any given time, we also worked with Vicki to create specialist content in our ‘How to sleep with ADHD: 10 sleep tips to improve your bedtime routine’ blog.
We really do care about your sleep and our charity partnerships are one of the many ways we can help you sleep better. Check out the rest of our blog for more sleep tips.
