October 15, 2024
By Rebecca Gleave, Music Therapy Assistant, EMT.
Mandeville School is a special education school in the Greenford community for children aged 2-11 with Severe Learning Difficulties, Autism and physical disabilities. Children at the school come from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds and have a diverse range of needs.
We have been working with Mandeville for over 25 years and are so proud of the work we have done together to provide a thriving Music Therapy service within the school. Our service has developed over recent years and we are now able to provide a 3-day Music Therapy service at Mandeville, meaning that more children than ever have access to support from our dedicated HCPC-registered therapists.
Last year, 17 children at Mandeville received Music Therapy through our service. Our Therapists helped the children with a range of challenges and needs including developing pre-verbal communication, social interaction and attentions skills; building positive relationships with others and working on peer relationships; managing sudden illness in the family, and changes in home and school environments; managing anxiety and emotions; and helping maintain skills due to degenerative conditions.
We are excited about the continued development of our service within Mandeville! We want to thank all the school staff, and give special thanks to Mundrika Bhanderi, Assistant Head Teacher, for supporting Music Therapy and advocating for it as a powerful clinical intervention for children with additional needs.
Below, Mundrika has kindly shared her perspective on how Music Therapy has helped children at Mandeville.
An Assistant Head Teacher’s perspective
Developing positive relationships and interactions
“Music Therapy has enabled pupils to develop a positive relationship and interactions with their therapy partner through exploring instruments, turn taking and sharing. The children can explore different instruments in the room, often choosing to play with something different each week including the ocean drum, the wind chimes and tambourine.
When the Therapist stops playing the piano, Child A will come over to her to communicate that he wants her to continue by placing her hands back on the keys.
Child B enjoys playing instruments using his feet. He likes the feel of different textures on the bottom of his feet. He will take his shoes and socks off at each session and will enjoy walking along the carpet or standing on the drum. In some sessions the Therapist has encouraged Child B to use his feet to tap on the drum. He has enjoyed this and communicated that he has wanted this to continue.”
Increasing vocalisations and gaining confidence within self
“To support Child C’s communication and develop his play skills, the Therapist has developed this into the stop/go game which she introduced last term. When the Therapist stops, she will say ‘ready, steady.’ and will wait for Child C to say ‘go’. Child C now anticipates this game during joint music-making.”
Developing stability in emotional and physical wellbeing
“Child D loves Disney songs and in particular Frozen. This has become a regular feature in Music Therapy sessions. During improvised sections in the song ‘Let It Go’, Child D is able to explore free vocal expression, exploring different melodic vocalisations and enabling him to express himself in different ways.”
Find Your Voice group
“The Find Your Voice group is run by one of our Music Therapists and our Speech and Language Therapist. It provides a safe and predictable environment for pupils to explore and develop their communication skills. This includes facial expressions, oral-motor skills, use of breath and generation of voice. The Find Your Voice sessions also create opportunities to follow instructions e.g. “can you collect all of the whistles?” These skills can then be applied to playing simple blowing instruments along to singing songs.
The group has enabled pupils to:
- Develop their observation and awareness of one another. The children have developed their ability to collaboratively sing and play together.
- Overtime, with consistency and repetition, learn songs by memory or by reading lyrics. As a result of this, the children have developed the ability to anticipate parts of the song and sing along.
- Explore singing. By the end of the group, one pupil was able to independently sing a full song without prompting.
- Engage in the activities and sit for the full 30-minute session with consistent staff to support the children and sensory regulatory strategies.
- Grow in confidence. Over the year there were increased instances of spontaneous voice production.”
December 20, 2023
By Robert Simonis, Music Therapist, EMT.
It has been a full year since I qualified as a Music Therapist from Roehampton and joined the Ealing Music Therapy (EMT) service team. This year, I have thoroughly enjoyed working for this service and look forward to many more happy years at Ealing Music Therapy.
My first clinical role was to work as a Music Therapist at Springhallow School. I have learnt a lot in my first year at Springhallow and have been fully supported by the staff.
I was given the opportunity to present my work from Springhallow at our Annual General Meeting. It was a privilege to present my work in front of my peers, colleagues and other people that joined us in the meeting. This was the first time that I had presented my work since I finished university. As a result, I felt apprehensive about the presentation but felt fully supported by my colleagues.
In this blog, I have written a case study based on that presentation that was titled ‘Building a Relationship’.
Building a relationship
Clare was a 6 year old with a diagnosis of Autism. She attends a school for pupils aged 4-16 years with a diagnosis of Autism and the pupils at the school have learning disabilities ranging from moderate to severe.
Clare is sensory seeking and often seeks out her own motivators. This results in her having fleeting and self-directed behaviour. She is able to engage in her own activities for long periods of time, but needs support to attend adult led activities.
Reasons for referral
Clare had attended Music Therapy in previous academic years. During this time, the staff noticed that she was making positive steps of progress with her communication. For example, she enjoyed singing and saying new words. Her parents also noticed these positive changes at home too.
Clare rarely demonstrates joint attention and it was felt that music therapy could assist Clare in continuing to develop her communication skills and joint interactions.
Finding our way
Clare was always keen to come to Music Therapy. However, she generally became very anxious during transitions and change. She therefore needed some time outside in the play area before coming to the music therapy room. In our initial sessions, Clare began cautiously. She did not want to play the same instruments with me and whenever I presented an instrument to her, she looked, then ran to the other side of the room. When I attempted to play the piano with her, she moved my hand away. She also covered her ears whenever I attempted to sing any songs.
Although it was very difficult to engage with Clare, we did manage to briefly interact during the early sessions. Clare enjoyed saying words that I would repeat. Whenever I repeated the words that she would say, she would change the word and wait for my response.
This interaction provided Clare with a response that was not just imitating her words, but a form of back-and-forth communication.
This interaction was the beginnings of a developing therapeutic relationship and showed us the potential music therapy would have for Clare.
Developing our relationship
As the sessions continued, I would follow Clare around the space in an attempt to get some musical interaction, however, she would run from one end of the room to the other. I decided to let Clare be free to express herself in the therapy space and to stop following her in a forced attempt to engage. Instead, I sat at the piano with a percussion instrument and attuned with her through the musical imitations of her movements, the words she was saying and melodies she’d hum to herself. As a result, the dynamic of the sessions began to shift and Clare began to initiate different musical responses between us.
By providing a safe and therapeutic environment for Clare to freely explore, allowed a developing relationship to emerge. By facilitating Clare’s wants and needs, Clare was able to manage her anxieties and begin to communicate and musically interact with me.
Musical interaction
Since Clare enjoyed exploring the therapy space, I set up the instruments at either end of the room and in the middle. I also put some cards and puppets on a chair with the songs she enjoyed singing. During this point in the Music Therapy sessions, Clare would go straight to the chairs that contained all the various cards and song choices. I would be sat in front of the keyboard and Clare would walk over to me saying the first name of the song. Once I began to sing, Clare would run across the room with the card in her hand and fall on the floor. As I was singing, I’d interrupt the song by musically mirroring Clare’s movement which elicited a response from Clare in the form of laughter. This interaction lasted for the whole session with Clare often coming next to me, making eye contact, smiling and attempting to communicate what she wanted.
This interaction facilitated prolonged joint attention between us on the same task. During these interactions, it seemed that I had become a secure base for Clare which facilitated her creative play in the therapy space before she’d return to me.
Summary of the work
Clare is nine months into her Music Therapy sessions. In this time, she has demonstrated a developing therapeutic relationship with me. Within this relationship, Clare has been free to explore the therapy space and demonstrated independence and creative play. This therapeutic environment has facilitated and encouraged her to communicate with me verbally and musically. Clare has shown joint attention and interactions in the various musical tasks and has been able to manage her anxieties. This has been achieved through song singing, free improvised musical dialogues and creative play.
