Dreaming Beyond Trauma

Our Work

Restoring sleep where it’s been disrupted most

Dreaming Beyond Trauma is our flagship model for women’s shelters and crisis accommodation. It brings together three essential elements of sleep care:

calming Sleep Packs, CPD-accredited staff training, and sleep-supportive room upgrades.

Each element is powerful on its own. Together, they create something far stronger:

a more settled night, a more regulated nervous system, and a more restorative environment for children and families recovering from violence and crisis.

This is sleep care woven into trauma recovery — not as an extra, but as a foundation.

Calming Sleep Packs

Practical tools that help the body settle

Our Sleep Packs are designed to reduce stimulation, support regulation, and make it easier for children to drift into sleep.

Created by Ahna de Vena and shaped by over two decades of clinical sleep work, each pack brings together sensory and sleep-supportive tools that help children unwind, reconnect with rhythm, and begin to rest more deeply.

The packs also support mothers and carers with gentle routines that reduce bedtime struggle and bring more calm to the evening.

Each pack includes:

Comforting Tactile Items: soft, grounding elements that help children feel more regulated and held
Amber Clip Light: gentle, low-stimulation lighting that supports melatonin and reduces evening alertness
Bedtime Guidance: simple trauma-informed practices that support more settles evenings
Soothing Audio: a calming sleep companion that helps children unwind and drift toward sleep
Eye masks: Helps create a sense of darkness and privacy, even in shared rooms—supporting melatonin production and deeper rest..

These are not just comforting items. They are tools for regulation, rhythm, and recovery.

CPD-Accredited Staff Training

Embedding sleep care into everyday support

Resources matter. But real change deepens when the people around a child understand how sleep, trauma, and regulation interact.

Our CPD-accredited training equips frontline staff with practical, trauma-informed ways to support better sleep—across shifts, across teams, and in the flow of real shelter life.

Staff learn how to:

Recognise sleep disruption as a key recovery issue
Use Sleep Packs and routines effectively
Reduce evening escalation and support calmer nights
Strengthen their own sleep and recovery so they can sustain the work

This is how sleep care stops being a one-off intervention and becomes part of the culture of care.

Bedrooms that support recovery

Turning bedrooms into places of rest

For children and women recovering from trauma, the room itself matters.

Harsh light, overstimulation, shared spaces, and unfamiliar environments can keep the nervous system alert long after the day is over. We work with shelters to gently transform bedrooms and shared areas into environments that support deeper rest.

This can include:

Amber lighting and lower-stimulation night conditions
Weighted blankets and soft sensory anchors
Practical, soothing changes that make bedrooms more biologically sleep-supportive

When the room changes, the night changes. And when the night changes, recovery begins to take root.

Filling a critical gap in trauma recovery

Dreaming Beyond Trauma is more than a program—it is a practical model for embedding Sleep Care into trauma recovery—and a step toward a wider systems shift.

Our work is guided by the STAR Loop™ — the Sleep-Trauma Adaptive Recovery model developed by Ahna de Vena, which shows how even small improvements in sleep can support a stabilising cycle of regulation and healing. Read the full STAR Loop paper here.