Jennifer Ryckaert
MMT, NZ RMTh, MT-BC
Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre, Auckland
Fiona Kenworthy
BSLT, PGCertSpSw, MNZSTA
Small Talk Therapy, Auckland
Keywords: Music therapy, speech-language therapy, interprofessional, early childhood, group work.
Abstract
This paper describes the development of interprofessional groupprogramming for young children with special needs at the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. Families at the centre expressed an interest in collaborative services that combined music therapy and speech-language therapy and this article examines how these services were designed and implemented by music therapist Jen Ryckaert and speech-language therapist Fiona Kenworthy. We discuss the motivation for this interprofessional collaboration, the planning process behind the group’s structure, the development of therapeutic targets for our work, the role of music within the sessions, and the outcomes for the children and families that we worked with.
