Introduction / Rationale: This study was done to understand and support students in a specialist visual impairment school with visual impairment having sleep difficulties. There is limited evidence to identify a singular strategy or a combination that works as a strategic intervention, however, most articles demonstrate that sleep related intervention in children with visual impairment is client specific.
Objectives: To identify trends in therapeutic practice to support children with visual impairment and sleep difficulties.
Methods / Approach: A scoping review qualitative research method was used to identify the different trends as this is exploratory research to understand a broader subject of sleep & visual impairment. The scoping review was used to assess available evidence on the different therapeutic interventions. The Arksey & O’Malley (2005) approach was used to identify and analyse the data
Results / Practice Implications: The results of the study indicated higher number of articles found in the Level 5 & 6 of the evidence pyramid indicating presence of case studies and qualitative research in the area. These articles showed several therapeutic interventions with Behavioural interventions being the most used by therapists.
Conclusion / Contribution to the Occupational Therapy Profession: This scoping review has identified several strategies based on evidence and can be used to support developing generic and pupil specific Sleep & visual impairment programmes for pupils with visual impairment at the specialist school. This review paper also supports development of learning programmes for support workers and families to understand the difficulties with sleep in children and young people with visual impairment