Is £30 per 30 mins reasonable for...

[StarlightMcKenzie]

music therapy from the Local Authority?

After banging on about it forever, and the SENCO saying that she has some children doing it but that there is no space for ds, the Head of Service suddenly phoned and offered some to ds (ASD) but wants £30.

Do you think the other children are being charged?

Starlight: I can't see how anyone would have needed to pay for private lessons
Until last year I had a job that involved working with 15 secondary schools in the borough. None of them offered piano tuition to children (there were some bands and a string orchestra in one of them, but these instruments can be taught in groups, so it's more cost efficient, whereas piano is always 1:1), so the several thousand kids who go to these schools will only learn the piano if their parents pay for it.

Starlight: I don't know what AB
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. There are several other exam boards that offer grade exams with different requirements (e.g. Guildhall).

Starlight: don't think it takes longer to plan in London than Grimsby.
No. But your time is more valuable in London because you have less of it. I can get to almost anywhere in my car within an hour (if I can't I won't accept the referral). In London it is not unheard of to commute 1.5 hours in each direction to work and back. Living costs are also higher in London, which needs to be reflected in salaries (and it is in the private sector).

Starlight: I do wonder though why people go into professions for highly
disadvanted children and then charge a bomb for services. Doesn't that
detract from the job satisfaction? That your potentially beneficial service
is not accessible to most?
No. Everybody has to make a living and if a service is beneficial that it is the state's responsibility to make it accessible to those who need it. That's why we can all go to the GP for free. If every music therapist could get a job in the public sector for a decent pay then it would be accessible to all. But mt jobs are few and far between and those of us who work in the private sector have bills too. The people who go into these jobs aren't people who want to work for free. They are people who want to do a job that will give them a decent living and job satisfaction.

P.S.: Let me put it this way: if clients don't pay me a decent fee, my practice will become unsustainable. I will be forced to shut shop and get a job somewhere else, doing something else. And then no one will be able to access music therapy, not even those disabled children who can actually pay for it.

But the children today who have to pay aren't music therapists yet. I thought it was a bit cheeky suggesting current music therapists would have had to pay loads out as kids or that they would have had to work hard. Of course but most kids work hard at the lessons.

You're right that the state should be funding essential therapy, if it is essential. There is a lot the state should be funding but isn't. The state should be funding music lessons imo.

A decent level of living, is of course, subjective. I can't see why someone earning a 'decent level of living' that appears to those using their services as extortionate (according to the level of living that they are expected to put up with) would agree with you, but I would assume that the market is at play here and you simply charge what you can get to fill spaces and it's probably as simple as that no?

I had to avoid music therapy due to high cost and don't regret it - I don't think it is very common for parents to pay for it as when it is so expensive you have to really look at the evidence base and think about whether you can justify the cost. I think earning a 'decent living' just by setting your own hours and pay is a bit of a pipe dream really, if it was that easy, we would all do it, I could earn a decent living by selling my MN postings if I could find someone to buy them !

Well anyway, some funding has been found for 1 term, so there you go!

I'm really pleased for him. I know he will love it and become so emersed he'll forget his communication anxieties and just move forward.

"signandsmile: ds gets one to one music session for £9

Is that music therapy though?......

Music therapy requires an assessment process, transcriptions of sessions (including notating the actual music that was created), data collation, etc. Almost anyone with a bit of knowledge about musical instruments can do a "music session" with children but that's not music therapy"

Yes special music that's why I called it a 'music session' not music therapy... because I wasn't sure of the 'regulations' !

Altho I have to say the sessions are designed specifically for my ds, we have materials (produced individually for him) to take home from each session, and we have an email discussion afterwards about what she/they did, how effective it was, what might be possible in future sessions, tweaking what she does from how each session goes."

I don't know her qualifications, (and I didn't make claims about them, ) all I can say if that this is theraputic for my ds.