Is a music therapist different from the lady who does the singalong at Dad's home?

#1Yusuf A.(Joined Aug 2025 · 11 posts)January 27, 2026, 12:09 pm

Asking because I have now been given two answers by two members of staff at the same home and they cannot both be right.

Dad's home has a woman who comes on Wednesdays with a keyboard and does an hour of songs. On the noticeboard it says "Music Therapy, Weds 2pm". When I asked the deputy manager whether she was a music therapist she said yes. When I asked the activities lead the same question a fortnight later she said, and I am quoting, "she's not a therapist, she's brilliant though".

I am not trying to catch anybody out. The woman is clearly good at what she does and Dad likes her. But I have been telling my brother in Manchester that Dad is getting music therapy, and if that is not what it is then I have given him a wrong picture of the care his father is having, and he is making decisions partly on what I tell him.

Is there an actual difference or is this a distinction that only matters to people who like distinctions?

#2mikeatthepiano(Joined Feb 2025 · 19 posts)January 27, 2026, 7:44 pm

Speaking as one of the keyboard people, so take this with the appropriate pinch of salt.

I play in three care homes and I am not a therapist and I have never claimed to be. But I have been introduced as one, by staff, in front of families, probably six or seven times, and I have learned to correct it in the moment because if you leave it thirty seconds it has set. Once I did not correct it and a woman asked me afterwards what I thought about her husband's swallowing and I had to say I am the man who plays the piano.

Nobody is lying. It is that "the music therapy" has become what the hour is called on the rota, and the rota outlives everybody's memory of who wrote it.

#3Miriam HalsteadModerator(Joined Mar 2024 · 208 posts)January 30, 2026, 10:18 am

I am the lady who does the singalong, so let me answer from the wrong side of the line rather than pretending to stand above it.

What I do is run weekly singing and songwriting sessions in two care homes and on a stroke rehabilitation unit, as a community practitioner. I hold a postgraduate certificate in arts and health, which is real training and is not a protected qualification, and I say that in those words rather than dressing it up. I am not registered to use the title music therapist and I do not use it. So yes, there is an actual difference, and I am on the other side of it from Rhian, and that is a useful place to write from.

Six checks separate the two, and they are practical rather than philosophical.

Was there an assessment before the work started. Are there written goals for a named person. Are there session notes going into a record. Is there clinical supervision. Is there a planned ending rather than a thing that simply carries on or stops when a grant does. And is there a name on a statutory register.

Mine fails all six and I am not embarrassed about that, because it is a different job rather than a lesser version of Rhian's. Nobody has assessed anybody in my Thursday group. There are no goals. I do not write notes about individuals. People arrive and leave as they please, which is the point of it.

The sixth check is the one that settles arguments and it is free. In the UK the Health and Care Professions Council protects four titles: art psychotherapist, art therapist, dramatherapist and music therapist. Four, not three, because art therapist and art psychotherapist are two separate protected titles covering the same profession, and "the three arts therapies" is a formulation that appears constantly in sector material and is wrong. There were 6,103 arts therapists on that register as at July 2026. You can search it by surname, publicly and free, in under a minute, and it tells you registration status and the registered title. Using a protected title without registration is a criminal offence, though note what is protected is the title and not the activity, so somebody can lawfully run a singing group and unlawfully call themselves a music therapist while doing it.

Two things that trip people up. A professional association directory is not a register, so use a directory to find somebody and the register to confirm them. And dance movement psychotherapist is not an HCPC protected title at all; ADMP UK runs its own accredited register instead, which is a real thing and a different kind of thing.

On your brother, which is the part of your post I would actually act on. I would correct it, not because your father is getting something inferior, but because the two are arranged through completely different routes and he will make the wrong request next time. If the ward or the home ever needs the clinical version, asking for more of the Wednesday lady will not get it, and asking a link worker will not get it either. Music therapy against community music sets out the six checks properly, and how to find a music therapist covers the routes and what a register does and does not tell you.

The last thing, and it is the one I care most about because the harm here runs in both directions. Calling my group therapy misleads a family and a commissioner. Calling Rhian's work "just a singing group" is what caused the confusion in the first place. Which is better is the wrong question, in the same way that asking whether a physiotherapist is better than a swimming teacher is the wrong question. And there is one asymmetry worth knowing while you decide anything: a clinical referral can be refused, deferred or waitlisted for months, and a singing group can generally start next Tuesday.

#4Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)February 1, 2026, 8:55 am

Checked the register for the woman at my mother's home while reading this. She is on it. I had assumed she was not, which says something about me rather than about her.

#5Yusuf A.(Joined Aug 2025 · 11 posts)February 24, 2026, 5:31 pm

Reporting back. Searched the register, she is not on it, and I want to be clear that I do not think anybody has done anything wrong.

I rang her, which felt awkward for about four seconds. She was completely straightforward: she is a community musician, she has been doing it for nine years, she has asked the home twice to change the noticeboard and it has not been changed. She said the word therapy makes it easier to defend in a budget meeting and she suspects that is why it survives.

Rang my brother. Told him it is a community singing session rather than a clinical therapy and that Dad seems happier on a Wednesday than any other day of the week. Both of those are true and I had been giving him only one of them.