Blunden Responsive GeMSS Method

Doctors, paediatricians, community health nurses, psychologists and other allied health professionals are often sought out by families who need help to improve their children’s sleep.

Due to increasing demand for experts sleep services for struggling families and individuals, Professor Sarah Blunden has launched her “Gentle Methods of Self Soothing (GeMSS) program.

This is one of the first evidence-based practice certificates designed for health professionals for professionals who wish to assist families with responsive sleep intervention methods.

The GeMSS has been manualised into a comprehensive Practice Certificate developed and utilised by during her years as the Founder and Director of the Paediatric Sleep Clinic in Australia. The GeMSS method is a recognised, published and evidence-based treatment for Behavioural Insomnia of Childhood as described by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. This Practice Certificate requires a graduate level of knowledge with a level of clinical expertise. Hence the GeMSS training is for any health, medical and/or allied health professional with at least an undergraduate degree.

In published research studies, The GeMSS method is shown to be a successful and gentle method of teaching infants and young children to sleep alone and to re-settle themselves when they wake overnight. The method does not involve leaving a child to cry, (often called cry-it-out, controlled crying or controlled comforting) but is based on “responsive” strategies rather than “ignoring” or “extinction” strategies. The responsive method is based more on the psychological theories of attachment and learned behaviour rather than extinction theory for those families who do not wish to ignore their child.

Practitioners need to learn detailed information about the physiology and psychology of sleep before learning the step by step behavioural approach to helping parents to teach their infants, toddlers and young children to sleep independently. The Practice Certificate is designed for a sequential progression through the content, as each module will assume mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in the previous modules. For example, Module 1 will be assuming the knowledge and capacity of a fully registered allied health professional and this must be with a mastery test before progressing to Module 2.

The content of the learning experience has been developed using adult learning principles and active learning approaches. These include reading, writing, reflections, checking of learning quizzes/activities and videos to aid learning.

Steps to gaining competency in delivering the Blunden Responsive GeMSS Method

Those who wish to undertake the training will be asked to register their interest in training in this method, must supply details of qualifications and await approval before completing payment, and enrolling in the course.  

Once practitioners have completed training and assessments in all four Modules, they will certified and registered as a practitioner of the GeMSS method. Certificates will be issued.

Yearly updates to keep abreast of new research developments in the areas of children’s sleep will be offered by webinar to all international GeMSS providers.

Course instructor:

Professor Sarah Blunden – Author
Read more about Professor Sarah Blunden

Cost of training:

AUD $895.00.
(1 year of access)

Included in course:

Membership of GeMSS license holders (AUD $75.00 /year)

Pre-reading manual
Copies of five seminal academic papers on the GeMSS method
Infant treatment manual
Toddler treatment manual
Marking and re-marking of assessment one, two and three.
Ongoing access to 3x training video presentations of Professor Blunden
Certificate of completion
Ongoing peer support (quarterly webinars, access to members only page, resources and GeMSS social media)

Not included in course:

The cost of The Boss of My Sleep Book AUS $27:49
The cost of the Sensible Sleep Solution infant book AUS $29.95.

International estimates of sleep problems in young people range between 10% and 45%. This suggests that approximately one in four children report significant sleep disturbance. How can we reduce that and/or prevent sleep disturbance from becoming a real problem in students at school? Sleep education is an obvious answer.

The first step is to increase awareness through sleep education in schools. Changing sleep patterns, through dedicated sleep education programs in schools, may be a potentially effective preventive health model. Teachers and schools are in a prime position to deliver sleep education to young people. Helping teachers and training them in sleep, is an imperative part of improving sleep in our young people.

Professor Sarah Blunden developed sleep education programs through The Australian Centre for Education in Sleep (ACES©) back in 2006. ACES programs for primary and senior schools have been written, trialled and adopted in schools in Australia and internationally and are still available in hard copy for teachers and schools.

The junior school program is available as hard copy and has also been adapted online in the free junior school program SimplyHealthy@Schools and is available free for teachers and schools with lesson plans and age appropriate activities.
The Senior School program has been adapted online into a state of the art sleep education program especially for teachers in the Healthy Sleep for Healthy Schools (HS4HS) which is now in final trials in Australia and Canada.

Finding ways for teachers to embed this important information into existing curricula on an ongoing basis, may result in more significant inroads into increasing the sleep health of the children in our classrooms so that changes can be achieved in meaningful and long lasting ways.