Private music therapist for Dad says "twelve sessions then we review" at £55 each. Is that a normal number or just how they keep you paying?

#1Yusuf A.(Joined Aug 2025 · 13 posts)August 24, 2026, 2:38 pm

Follow on from my thread in January, for anyone who remembers it. Once we knew the Wednesday woman at Dad's home was a community musician and not a therapist, my brother and I decided that if Dad was going to have music therapy we would arrange the real thing ourselves and pay for it between us.

Found one. Checked the register, she is on it, and she has worked in older people's services for years. She came to the home twice, once to meet Dad and once to talk to the staff and to me, and she has now sent a proposal. Twelve weekly sessions of 45 minutes, in his room or the quiet lounge, at £55 a session, and then a review. Her words were "a starting block, not a course".

My brother in Manchester, who is paying half, read that and said "twelve then review is what my gym said". Which made me laugh and then made me worry, because I could not actually answer him.

So. Is twelve a normal number or a round one. Why 45 minutes and not an hour, is that a discount or a decision. What does a review actually involve, is it a meeting or an invoice. And the thing I really want to know and feel stupid asking, does whatever it does stop when the sessions stop, because if so what is the point of twelve of anything.

The home's manager, for what it is worth, pointed out that the Wednesday singing is free.

#2mikeatthepiano(Joined Feb 2025 · 19 posts)August 24, 2026, 8:11 pm

Twelve then review is exactly what my art therapist proposed back in March and I still have not bought it, boiler fund, so I cannot tell you whether it is fair. I can tell you it is common. And I can tell you she talked about what the ending would look like at the very first meeting, before I had paid for anything, which the gym never did.

#3linkworker_sam(Joined Oct 2025 · 14 posts)August 26, 2026, 9:40 am

Different animal from what I arrange, but the comparison might help.

The courses I refer people to run 8 to 10 weeks because that is the funded block, and at the end they stop. Nobody reviews anything. There is no meeting, no letter, the artist packs up and the room goes back to being a room. I say that not to run them down, people get a lot from them, but because "review" is a word I never get to use. A therapist saying it is already describing more structure than anything on my list.

Also twelve is not magic. It is roughly a school term, which is where a lot of these habits come from.

#4Dr Rhian VaughanMusic therapist moderator(Joined May 2024 · 91 posts)August 28, 2026, 11:15 am

I work clinically as a music therapist, mostly in an older people's mental health service and on a stroke unit, so I can describe how this is meant to work. I have not met your father and will not comment on what he needs; that is for the therapist who has assessed him and the staff who know him.

Straight answer to the first question. Twelve weekly sessions then a review is a normal starting block, and "a starting block, not a course" is the accurate description of it. In my own practice a course of individual work with one person runs for months rather than weeks. The number of sessions is set at assessment against the goals agreed, which is why she came twice before proposing anything, and it is provisional until the review. A therapist who quoted a number before meeting him would have been telling you about her diary. A therapist who proposed something open ended with no assessment and no review date would be the one to be wary of. How many sessions arts therapy takes sets out the whole shape, including what happens when the funding rather than the work fixes the number.

Forty five minutes is a decision, not a discount. Adults are usually seen for about an hour, and people who tire quickly, who are very unwell, or who are late in a dementia are often seen for less because the last quarter of an hour adds nothing and can take something away. Session length is one of the things an assessment is for.

On the price. The British Association for Music Therapy gives a recommended floor of from £52.00 upwards for an individual session, so £55 sits just above the floor, which is what you would expect from somebody with years in the field rather than a bargain or a mark up. Twelve at £55 is £660, and the useful number is that one, the course total, rather than the per session figure. If the review proposes continuing, ask for the next block's total in the same way.

The review is a meeting, not an invoice. It should look again at the goals from the assessment, with you and with the home's staff, since your father cannot easily give an account of the weeks himself, and it should end in one of three places: continue with the same goals, continue with changed goals, or plan an ending. Whichever it is, there is a written record. At the end of the whole course there is a discharge summary, and you can ask now who it will go to. Ask also what she writes after each session and whether a line goes in the home's communication book, because a session that the night staff know nothing about is a recurring problem on this board.

Your last question is the important one and the evidence on it is not comfortable. The 2025 Cochrane review of music based therapeutic interventions for people with dementia, 30 studies and 1,720 participants randomised, found a small improvement in depressive symptoms during treatment, SMD -0.23 at moderate certainty, no meaningful effect on agitation, and no evidence of any effect persisting four weeks after treatment ended. That last finding is a not demonstrated result rather than a tested and ruled out one, and it is set out in full on music therapy for dementia. The practical reading is that if the sessions help, they help while they are happening. That is not an argument against twelve of them. It is an argument for planning what follows before the twelve are over, and for keeping the free Wednesday singing going at the same time rather than treating the two as rivals, because they are not doing the same job.

#5Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)September 18, 2026, 7:48 am

Ours went the other way on the numbers and the same way on the principle. My brother's therapist proposed four sessions of half an hour then a review, because of the fatigue, so both the number and the length moved to fit him rather than the other way round.

Three in, one to go before the review. He is still not enthusiastic. She has already told us what session four is for and what she will be looking at when we talk afterwards. That is what the word review turned out to mean for us: somebody had decided in advance what the question was.

#6Yusuf A.(Joined Aug 2025 · 13 posts)September 19, 2026, 6:03 pm

Went ahead. Three sessions in.

Things I did not expect. A member of staff sits in for the last five minutes of each one for a handover, at her request, not ours. She writes two lines in the communication book every time, which after the other thread on this board I had been planning to insist on and did not have to. The review is in the diary for the third week of November with my brother dialling in, and she has already said what she will be bringing to it.

My brother has stopped saying gym. His exact words were "at the gym nobody writes down what happened", which I think is the whole difference in one sentence.

Wednesday singing carries on. Dad has no idea any of this cost anything, which is as it should be. Will come back after November.