How to Find a Music Therapist: Registers, Referrals and What to Ask

In the United Kingdom, finding a music therapist means finding a name on the Health and Care Professions Council register, because music therapist is a title protected in law, and everything else you might use to check somebody, a website, a leaflet, a job title on a rota, is second hand. The harder part is not verification. It is that the profession is small, provision is uneven, and for most people the binding constraint turns out to be whether anyone is available at all rather than what it would cost.

The reason I take the verification step seriously is that I once failed it, and did so helpfully. A daughter caught me at the end of a session in one of the homes I work in, while I was packing away, and asked whether I knew of a music therapist for her father. I did what felt generous: I gave her the name and number of a community musician I rate highly, who is warm, experienced, wonderful with people in the later stages of dementia, and not a therapist. I did not say that last part, because in the moment it did not seem like the important thing about him. It was the important thing about him. She had asked a specific question, using a word that means something specific, and I answered a different question. Her father may well have had a lovely time. What he did not get was an assessment, written goals, a record anybody read, or a professional accountable to a regulator, and nobody ever told her that was the trade. It is the worst piece of advice I have given in this work, and it is why the first section of this page is a register search rather than a list of nice people.

This is a practical page rather than an evidence one, so it quotes no effect size and carries no tier label on anything. Where the rest of this site does make a claim about whether something works, it labels it Tier 1 supported, Tier 2 promising but limited, or Tier 3, meaning either that no adequately powered controlled study exists or that the controlled evidence is null, always saying which. How those judgements are made is on reading arts in health research.

The one check that settles it

Search the register by name. In the UK, the Health and Care Professions Council register is public, free, searchable by surname, and it will tell you within a minute whether somebody is registered and under which title.

The council protects four arts therapy titles: art psychotherapist, art therapist, dramatherapist and music therapist. “The three arts therapies” appears constantly in sector material and is wrong, because art therapist and art psychotherapist are separate protected titles covering one profession. In July 2026 the register listed 6,103 arts therapists in total across all four¹. Using one of those titles without registration is a criminal offence, not a matter of professional manners.

Two limits on what that check gives you. It protects the title rather than the activity, so anybody may lawfully run a music group in a hospice or a care home, and many people do so very well; what they may not do is call it music therapy. And a register entry is a licence to practise rather than a review of quality, which is the honest limit discussed at the end of this page. The full account of the boundary is on music therapy against community music, and the pillar page music therapy sets out what the profession does and where its evidence stands.

The UK routes, and exactly who to ask

Most music therapy in the UK is reached by referral through a service rather than by booking it directly, so the practical question is which service, and who inside it holds the request.

NHS mental health services. Community mental health teams, early intervention services and inpatient units employ arts therapists in some areas and not in others. The person to ask is the care coordinator or the responsible clinician, and the question worth asking first is whether an arts therapy post exists in the trust at all, because that answer determines everything that follows. For children and young people, the same question goes to the child and adolescent mental health service.

Hospices and palliative care. Hospices are among the more reliable employers of music therapists in the UK, often funded through the hospice’s own fundraising rather than through a health contract. Ask the hospice directly, including for day services and family support, which sometimes hold the post rather than the ward.

Schools and special educational needs. Special schools, and some mainstream schools with resourced provision, commission music therapy either directly or through an education, health and care plan. The people to ask are the special educational needs coordinator and, where a plan exists, whoever reviews it, because a provision named in a plan is a stronger route than a request made informally.

Local authorities and community learning disability teams. Adult social care and community learning disability services commission arts therapies in some areas, frequently through a contract with a charity rather than through employed staff.

Charities and voluntary organisations. A substantial amount of UK music therapy is delivered by charities, some national and some very local, and they are easy to miss because they do not appear in NHS directories. Dementia organisations, autism charities, brain injury charities and hospice partnerships are all worth contacting directly.

Private practice. Where nothing is commissioned, private work is the remaining route. Find the practitioner, then check the register, then ask about assessment.

If you are being routed through social prescribing rather than a clinical service, be aware that the destination is usually community activity rather than therapy. That is a good route to a good thing, and it is a different thing: see social prescribing explained, arts on prescription and how to get referred to an arts scheme.

What a professional body listing is, and what it is not

The British Association for Music Therapy runs a find a therapist listing, and it is the most useful place to start when you are looking for somebody in private practice². It is a membership directory rather than a register, and that distinction is worth holding on to.

A directory tells you that somebody has joined a professional body, usually pays a subscription, and has chosen to be findable in a particular area and with a particular population. That is genuinely useful information: it is how you discover that the nearest therapist who works with adolescents is forty minutes away rather than two hours. It is not a statutory check, it does not carry a criminal sanction behind it, and it is maintained by an association rather than by a regulator.

So use both, in this order. Search the directory to find candidates, then search the register to confirm each one, then contact them. If a listing anywhere will not give you a full name, you cannot complete the second step, and I would treat that as a reason to move on rather than a formality.

Outside the United Kingdom

Every country arranges this differently, and the important variable is whether the title is protected in law or only credentialled by a professional body.

United States. The credential is MT-BC, board certified, awarded and maintained by the Certification Board for Music Therapists, which recorded 10,699 credential holders as at 30 June 2026 in its certificant data³. Worth knowing if you go looking: the board’s own About page still describes the credential as held by “over 9,000” practitioners, which is stale, so use the certificant data and check its date rather than quoting the page. The larger point is structural: most US states do not license music therapists, so in most places the credential is the only formal check available to you and there is no statutory register behind it. State licensure, where it exists, is separate and additional.

Australia and New Zealand. In Australia the credential is Registered Music Therapist, and the Australian Music Therapy Association maintains the credential and a directory of practitioners⁴. It is a professional credential rather than statutory registration, which again means the association is the body to check with.

Europe. The European Music Therapy Confederation is the route to a national association rather than a register in itself, and it is the fastest way to find out which body holds the standard in a given country⁵. Title protection varies widely across Europe, and in several countries the title is not protected at all.

The other modalities, across Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. ANZACATA covers creative arts therapies across that region under one register, spanning the visual, dramatic and movement modalities as well as music⁶, which makes it the useful single starting point if what you are looking for is not specifically a music therapist. For the visual side of that question, art therapy sets out the credentials and how they differ.

What it costs

For most people the answer is nothing directly, because the work reaches them through a service that has already paid for it. Where it does not, there are two figures worth knowing and both are routinely misquoted.

In the UK the British Association for Music Therapy recommends from £52.00 upwards for an individual session in private practice². Read that as what it is: a recommended floor, not an average, not a typical price and not a benchmark to hold a therapist to. In the United States, the 2021 AMTA workforce analysis reports a median of $79 per hour⁷. Quote the median rather than the mean, which is pulled upwards by outliers, and date it 2021 every time, because it is not a current figure and the field has had five years of inflation since.

Route	Who pays	What the person pays
NHS, where commissioned	The commissioning service	Nothing
Hospice	Usually hospice fundraising	Nothing
School or education plan	School or local authority	Nothing
Charity provision	Grants and donations	Nothing, or a small contribution
Private practice, UK	The family	BAMT recommends from £52.00 upwards per session

When you are comparing private quotations, ask what each one includes. Assessment sessions, travel to a home or a school, written reports, attendance at reviews and the therapist’s own clinical supervision are all genuine costs, and practitioners fold them in differently. The figure worth comparing is what a term of work would total, not the hourly rate. What happens in a music therapy session sets out what the work around the hour actually consists of.

Three or four questions worth asking before you book

A short conversation before any commitment tells you most of what you need, and none of the questions require you to know anything about music.

Are you registered, and under what name should I search for you? A registered practitioner will answer this without any awkwardness at all, and will often volunteer their registration number.

Have you worked with this population before, and how much? Experience with older people with dementia, with autistic children, with acquired brain injury or with people who are dying is not interchangeable. Ask for specifics rather than reassurance.

What would an assessment involve, and what comes out of it in writing? You are listening for a description of one or two sessions, followed by written goals and a proposal about frequency and length. An offer of weekly sessions with no assessment and no written aim is a red flag regardless of who is offering it.

What would ending look like? A planned discharge, worked towards and named in advance, is a structural feature of this work rather than an administrative detail, and a practitioner who has not thought about it is telling you something.

When there is nobody available near you

This is the most likely outcome, and it deserves a straight answer rather than encouragement.

Ask the referring team to lodge the referral anyway, if one is warranted, and ask how long the wait is in months. Ask whether a neighbouring service accepts out of area referrals. Ask the hospices, special schools and disability charities in your region directly, because they employ arts therapists more often than general services do and they do not show up in the obvious places. If online work is on offer, ask whether it is appropriate for this particular person rather than in general, because for some people it works and for others the whole point is being in a room with somebody.

In the meantime, community activity is worth having on its own terms and is very often available when therapy is not. A weekly singing group is not a clinical intervention and is not a substitute for one, and it is a genuinely good thing to be part of: dementia choirs and singing groups covers what that side of the field offers, and music therapy for dementia sets out where the clinical evidence actually stands, which is more specific than the claims made for it.

The honest limit of what a register can tell you

A register answers one question well and several others not at all, and knowing which is which stops people over reading it.

What it establishes: this person holds the qualification, is entitled to use the title, is subject to standards of conduct and performance, and can be complained about to a regulator with the power to act. That is a great deal, and it is precisely what no community activity can offer.

What it does not establish: whether this practitioner is any good, whether they will suit the person in question, whether they have relevant experience, or whether their approach is the right one here. Registers are floors rather than rankings. The rest comes from the conversation, from the assessment, and from whoever made the referral. This site does not recommend individual practitioners for exactly that reason, and any list that does is worth asking hard questions of.

One last thing to hold in mind while you make these calls. Finding a music therapist can take months, and nothing in that wait should displace treatment somebody already needs; this is work that sits alongside care rather than in place of it. If the wait turns out to be long, the useful move is not to find something that sounds like therapy but to find something honestly described, and to keep the referral live while you do. If the profession itself interests you rather than the service, training as a music therapist sets out what the route demands.