How music therapy supports children in therapeutic settings

Over the course of a week, I meet with children at different points in their young lives. They may attend mainstream schools, specialist alternative provisions (following school exclusion) or they may currently be out of education – an increasingly at-risk population since the Covid-19 pandemic.

My caseload at Coram is varied, including children who have been through court proceedings, who may be adopted or live with their birth parents or kinship carers, children who have identified diagnoses such as autism, adolescents with complex additional needs and asylum-seeking children, often with little or no English. I also supervise music therapists and trainees working with young children who have profound learning difficulties and those who are selectively mute.

In music therapy, we often improvise or “make up” music together – there’s no right or wrong or need to be musically skilled. We experience each other in real time, with music acting both as a containing, reassuring presence and as a direct access point for expressed emotion. In sessions, children experience being responded to by the music therapist and their carers, who are developing a better understanding of their children’s needs and how they meet in the moment, attuning to upset (and joy) in ways that feel more manageable for the child.

Evaluation of the Coram service has shown that early music therapy intervention can support significant improvement in children’s ability to relate to adults and peers, and in developing their attention and awareness to support school readiness and learning.

One of the unique aspects of music therapy is the capacity to work nonverbally, to offer reparative experiences for children who have suffered developmental trauma. I also work with children who have highly developed expressive language skills, but may find it challenging to verbalise their experiences, at least initially.

A great privilege in my work is learning alongside children, families and the multidisciplinary team at Coram, as we develop a shared understanding of what bespoke support might look like for different children and how we build on the creativity within family systems, both in music therapy and beyond.

The Coram Creative Therapies team accepts referrals from social workers and education and health professionals, as well as parents, carers and self-referrals from children and young people