Music Therapy for children with special needs - clinical practice and assessment in the light of developmental psychology and communicative musicality: Clinical assessment and evaluation as an integrated part of clinical practice

Assessment or evaluation is a continuing part of clinical music therapy, both in the beginning, in the continuous process, and in the evaluation of the music therapy – and sometimes even for a diagnostic assessment (Wigram, Pedersen and Bonde, 2002). After an overall introduction to music therapy assessment, the focus is on clinical use of an assessment approach in everyday work, followed by ways of using video recordings in assessing music therapy processes. The way you ask musically, the way the child can answer you! Therefore, it is the therapist’s responsibility to ask in many ways, but in a systemized way. The workshop contains practices in the use of different approaches and playing rules related to clinical assessment – seen as a way of musical asking, repeating and setting goals. As well, the workshop incorporates the use of video recordings in music therapy to analyze and search for patterns in clinical work, e.g. analyzing the way members act in the group or towards the therapist. The practices will continuously be connected with a focus on how the music therapy research as well as developmental psychology can inform the assessment. Literature for further reading: Holck, U. (2007). An Ethnographic Descriptive Approach to Video Micro Analysis. In: Wosch, T. & Wigram, T. (Eds.). Microanalysis in music therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Jacobsen, S. L. (2012). Music Therapy Assessment and Development of Parental Competences in Families Where Children Have Experienced Emotional Neglect. PhD thesis, Department of Communication, Aalborg University. See chapter 2.5.5-6. For download: http://vbn.aau.dk/files/68298796/42798_jacobsen2012.pdf Priestley, M. (1994). Essays on Analytical Music Therapy. Phoenixville PA: Barcelona Pub¬lishers. Wigram, T. (1999). Assessment Methods in Music Therapy: A Humanistic or Natural Science Framework? Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 8(1), 7-25. Wigram, T., Pedersen, I. & Bonde, L. O. (2002). A comprehensive guide to music therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Wosch, T. & Wigram, T. (2007, Eds.). Microanalysis in music therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. (Chapters on different analyses methods)