Last Friday, Clare delivered the fourth training session at Moss Park Care Home. The staff began to lead their own music sessions and next week will take on full ownership of music at Moss Park. Clare reflects on their impressive progress:

It’s Week Four and I left Moss Park today feeling that really good musical things are happening there. Both Debbie (bottom left, with Shirley) and Fiona (top right, with Joan) led part of our individual sessions today with Joan and Shirley respectively. Both showed a real understanding and sensitivity in the way they worked. We had some really good opportunities for discussing what we were all doing and importantly why we do it, and Debbie and Fiona showed some super insight into this. Despite not being able to see Eileen with Kim today, Kim was able to tell me all about the work she is doing with Eileen on a daily basis and feels that using music is making a big difference with daily tasks such as taking pills and encouraging her to come out of her room more often; This is so brilliant to hear and really epitomises what we are trying to achieve in our projects. To hear that the staff are using music as a tool for communicating, connecting and making daily tasks more manageable is wonderful. So well done to Debbie, Fiona and Kim for all your brilliant work.

I would also just like to say a huge well done too to Mandy who trained with me at Invernevis. and is using her skills in Moss Park as well on a Friday afternoon running a lovely singing session along with her friend Mo. Yesterday was the first time one of our residents joined in, after her individual music as therapy session. She thought she might stay a little while and ended up staying the whole session! This was a huge positive and as one of our targets for her was to encourage her to take part in more activities within the care home we were all feeling quite smug that the music experiences were already making an impact and helping to ease the feelings of loneliness and isolation. With only two more weeks left I am looking forward to Debbie and Fiona taking over the sessions next Friday.