Advice needed for screaming in night

[Candycoco]

Hi everyone,

I'm 3 weeks into a new placement and have a 5 year old and her newborn sibling. The first week 5yr old slept well from 7-7, but since then she has started waking in the night multiple times screaming and crying.
This is waking up everyone and I feel like a complete zombie as I am up doing night feeds too and the baby is a terrible sleeper, struggles to get into deep sleep and wakes/crys continuously.
I know children often had problems sleeping, but I have tried talking to the 5 year old during the day time to try and see what is going on for her. I have tried to tell her that if she needs me not to scream I will come if she just calls my name or knocks on my door. But then last night she spent all night doing a combination of knocking/crying/screaming. I am really struggling at the moment.
Please someone tell me it'll get better and help me with what to do!

It's difficult to comment without knowing the reasons the children are in care, but I'd say it's pretty usual for a child to wake in the night terrified after only being with you for three weeks.

The first week or so they are likely to have been exhausted by bedtime simply from coping with the mental stress of being in a new place. This will have worn off a little now.

Do you have a night light in her room? Could you feed the baby in her room if she's awake, or is she too upset for you to feed the baby? (I know when my current placement is upset they'd be made worse by me turning my attention to something else)

Have you discussed it with your SSW? One of my placements was very traumatised at night and in the end the only workable solution was for me to sleep on a mattress in her room. Obviously needed approval from SW though. It was far from ideal (for me!) but looking back now it wasn't forever and it was better than listening to her get so worked up.

Make sure you try and snatch a couple of minutes to yourself whenever you can, new placements aren't easy at the best of times. It WILL get better though.

Little ones get very confused with dreams/reality and time frames, I have a 2.5 year old with me, first night slept 12 hours then kept waking crying and things, we just kept going in, well i did, hubby tried once and she screamed the house down in a panic. She's been here 7 weeks now, cant remember the last time she woke in the night, its all very settled. Just get cat naps during the day. x