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Music Therapy Conversations


Mar 11, 2020

In episode 36, Luke talks to his manager at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, Sarah Hadley. Sarah trained at Nordoff-Robbins in 1984 where she feels privileged to this day to have experienced a structured and focused training in how to use music to tap into her clients' fundamental "music child"; namely that innate communicative musicality we all possess, which provides the platform for powerful therapeutic inter-relationship though which sustainable outcomes can be achieved. From the outset Sarah has always been intrigued by the other Music Therapy trainings which she feels create multi- dimensional perspectives and rationale to clinical practice and within her team Sarah has consistently sought to recruit across professional trainings.

Sarah draws on nearly  35 years practice within the NHS working within multi-professional, inter-disciplinary and transdisciplinary teams, and not least the Oxleas Music Therapy Team itself. Sarah has also had a 20 year working relationship with the charity Music as Therapy International which has taken her on numerous trips to Romania, initially in 1999 10 years post the downfall of the Ceausescu regime, to provide skill-sharing training for staff teams  within orphanages and specialist children's centres.

Her professional and strategic focus as lead of the Oxleas Music Therapy Service is on embedding practice strategically, operationally and clinically within the organisation and the community believing in the added value of integrated music therapy intervention for children/ young people and their families.

Sarah talks about her training at NR, including a shocking revelation about what happened in the loft, but also in some detail about the musical and theoretical elements of the course. Luke and Sarah go on to discuss attachment theory, affect attunement, interactive music making, and Oxleas Music Therapy Service.

Details for the Inside Out/Outside In Symposium are here.