Prioritizing sleep health in foster care: Trauma-informed considerations for policy

Abstract Children in foster care risk developmental and socio-emotional problems given early experiences of adversity, instability, maltreatment, and/or trauma. Healthy sleep, which plays a crucial role in child development, contributes to child welfare’s primary goals: safety, permanency, and well-being (Stoltzfus, 2025). Federal law requires that each child in foster care receive “safe and proper” care, but no federal or state policies address sleep health beyond these considerations. After reviewing the sleep-related regulations and guidelines for all 50 U.S. states, we discuss the role of healthy sleep for meeting the child welfare goals and offer considerations to help states develop evidence-based policies to promote sleep health.