Music Therapy and Parent-infant Programmes

Parent-infant work in music therapy provides the opportunity for the existing musicality of the infant-care giver pair to be accessed and enhanced. Music therapy is provided to support and enhance the skills of the dyad thus improving the relational strengths where a difficulty or impairment of satisfying contact in the relationship has occurred. The approaches developed in parent infant music therapy group and individual work have been informed primarily from an understanding of the importance of an infant achieving secure attachment with a primary care giver as the basis of ongoing lifelong mental health. This chapter provides an overview of practice in parent-infant music therapy programmes, including considerations for starting groups. Additionally, the growing literature in this field is presented and discussed.