Moving Through Uncertainty

During the past nine months the service has undergone a major transition in delivering our ENCORE Music Programme online. The service has adapted rapidly to an uncertain time and has been able to continue providing coping strategies for children with low self-esteem and anxiety. We are currently in our second phase of virtual delivery, which will be explained below.

Support at Home

In April we adapted our programme to be accessible 1:1 from the comfort of the young people’s homes. Through a series of video links our team created, children were able to look at the strategies in their own time each week, pause the video to take part in both therapeutic and musical activities and at the end they had the option to send in a video of the song they’ve been working on. They also had 1:1 calls with a member of the team to offer a more person-focused approach. Some of the coping strategies discussed included:

• Creating a worry scale
• Body percussion
• Mindful colouring
• Mindful listening
• Making a worry box
• Creating a feel-good playlist
• Deep breathing
• Writing lyrics or finding a poem they resonate with and putting it to music

This type of 1:1 support offered flexibility within the service as children could take part in the video sessions in their own time, with their parent/carer and recap things they have forgotten. As with all coping strategies, practice makes perfect. The video links allowed children to instil the strategies into their daily routine and once their strategies became habitual, they were more able to respond to stressful circumstances, having a positive effect on their ability to cope. 

Not being able to engage through face to face contact has been challenging as it has been difficult to maintain a personalised and engaging approach to what we do without direct contact, with some children finding it hard to sustain their attention in the 1:1 conversations with a member of the team. On a positive note, we’ve found that some parents have used the videos as a useful bonding activity with their children which has helped opened up a dialogue about emotions which they may not have access to otherwise. Parents have also generally been more forthcoming about the struggles their child is experiencing and how it may relate to their own. Telephone contact to parents acted as a useful starting point for parents to reflect on the family dynamics at home and what strategies might be most appropriate for their child. Out of every obstacle, a new solution can be formed and being forced to implement our service into an online format has enabled the service to move into agile working much quicker and with more conviction than would have otherwise been the case. Agile working has given staff the flexibility to work in a way that is more convenient for them. 

In terms of music, we were able to provide online music tutorials for children on guitar, keyboard, percussion, ukulele and through singing. These simple online tutorials have the added option of making instruments at home using objects such as plant pots and boxes for drumming! This meant children who didn’t have access to instruments at home were still able to participate in the activities and learn that music can be made in many different ways. Within the programme, we also included activities on mindful listening so that children could practice paying attention to different timbre, instruments, dynamics and rhythms. Children were encouraged to research genres of music they had never listened to before and now have a broader awareness – one parent shared that they had never listened to bhangra before but enjoyed it so much they were going to continue researching.

Support at School

Since the beginning of this academic year, the ENCORE programme has provided two options for interventions in school. One option has been a pre-recorded programme similar to the support offered at school which the children watch together in a group. A teacher is present and supporting them throughout the sessions, encouraging conversations and participation. Some schools have preferred this method, perhaps because it offers more flexibility as to when the intervention takes place and is less daunting than seeing us ‘live’ on a screen. If a school opts for a pre-recorded programme, then the team supports them weekly with short 1:1 video calls, allowing questions, a recap on the progress made and to check-in with their wellbeing. This has allowed us to continue to offer a more tailored support, despite receiving the videos. 

The second option for participating in the ENCORE programme in school has been through live sessions. This involves meeting the children as a group via a live video link and interacting with them in real time. A teacher is still present to assist with any physical needs of the session such as writing or escorting the children back to class. 

For both live and pre-recorded programmes, schools were loaned a set of ukuleles which we were able to purchase due to changes in our running costs. During the sessions we have mainly focused on learning the ukulele, singing and percussion and the loaned ukuleles have enabled greater engagement in the music section of the programme. 

So far, the live interventions have worked well. Initially when meeting the children through this live format, most children adapted to the format quickly and were able to engage and communicate effectively. There were a few occasions when the live format was visibly overwhelming for a couple children, but we have seen them adapt and become more normalised to this way of working in session 1. During session 1, children seemed particularly engaged when using body percussion and when exploring their early signs of anxiety and anger. During more subtle technique such as deep breathing or mindfulness techniques, attention seemed to dwindle slightly. It was hard to get a sense of the children when they were far away from the screen, however the 1:1s in the middle and end of the programme coincide with the live programme. 

For both the live and pre-recorded programmes we are continuing to speak with parents/carers at the beginning of the programme and also offer them the opportunity to feedback any improvements they’ve seen and any concerns via a telephone call midway through and at the end of our sessions. 

As a team we have found it very useful to have the pre-recorded sessions to hand in the event of staff or student absences as the pre-recorded sessions can be sent so that the session isn’t missed. As time goes on we will become more accustomed to this way of working and will be able to manage our time more effectively between tasks and see which activities require more assistance which could perhaps be prepared in advance. We have found that it has been more difficult to build rapport with the children and have a therapeutic relationship emerge via video conferencing, which can feel exhausting. Now more than ever, we realise that as practitioners we need to take our own advice when it comes to self-care. 

Written by Abi, Therapeutic Music Programme Assistant