Treloar's staff successfully complete Safe&Sound postdoctoral research in music therapy

"At Treloar School, participants' enthusiasm and ideas for future integration of Safe&Sound learning into their classroom practice were truly inspiring." Dr Lisa Margetts

Treloar's student support assistants recently took part in a year-long piece of postdoctoral research in partnership with Dr Lisa Margetts, honorary research fellow in music therapy at The University of Roehampton. 

The Safe&Sound Project was created to support classroom practitioners working in SEND schools to optimise relationships with students through musical interaction and play. Safe&Sound Phase 2 has widened the scope of previous feasibility studies by training five UK Music Therapists to deliver the programme in their school workplaces. 

This second phase of the study involved training Treloar's Music Therapist Cressida Lindsay to offer a 15-hour consultation programme for 4 Student Support Assistants (SSAs), offering insight into child development, the importance of play in forming relationships, and the potential for music to facilitate this. The SSAs then worked with a student each to offer 6 video-recorded musical play sessions collecting data to study the effects of the work. 

Cressida was very inspired by the commitment of the SSAs who took part, and who reported positive results in their use of music with their students. The 4 SSAs: Sam Jarrett, Louise Stretton, Tracy Sexton and Levinie Fourie spoke about how much they enjoyed the training sessions and learned about new ways to interact with students. One participant said: 

"It was an eye-opener for me to watch the videos and see the responses of the students in the training. We all know the effect of music but to see it in this context was different. I’ve seen the change in the student, and because her vocabulary has developed, I can see how much more she can be involved in the process. There is definitely a benefit to this." 

Another participant said: 

"It was really enjoyable to do the training. I learned a lot and it was great to be with the other SSAs and meet each week to learn together. We miss our training sessions and when we see each other we say that we wish we could do it again. A new way of thinking, reacting and engagement between students and staff."

Dr Lisa Margetts has analysed the numbers and found that each data set responded positively to the Safe&Sound intervention. These results were statistically significant in all data sets, which implies that the improvement resulted from the intervention, rather than occurring by chance.

We look forward to hearing how our dedicated SSAs continue to use their new found skills as they start work with other students in this new academic year.