City Research Online

Abstract

Background
The first 1001 days of life are a critical time in children’s development and can be challenging for parents and caregivers. Some families in the United Kingdom (UK) are not getting the support they need. Research indicates that musical care – the role of music in supporting any aspect of people’s developmental or health needs – can support families during, what we term, the beginning of life: pregnancy to two years of age. Musical care activities can take place in health and community settings and include music making, music listening, and music therapy. We must describe and understand the patterns of use of musical care activities during the beginning of life in the UK to capitalise on the potential of musical care to support families.

Methods
This article explores, from parents’ and musical care providers’ perspectives, (1) participation and provision of musical care activities, (2) descriptions and experiences of musical care activities, and (3) motivations for, deterrents from, and perceived outcomes of participation in musical care activities. Data from two co-developed cross-sectional surveys for parents/caregivers (N = 578) and providers (N = 50) was analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis.

Results
Most parent/caregivers had participated in at least one musical care activity (83%). The most attended activity was play and development groups for babies that involve some music. Following our thematic analysis, personal preference, experiential and practical factors, recommendation by healthcare providers, and expectation of benefit were identified as motivators while deterrents included challenges in resources and logistics, and lack of inclusivity and diversity. Parents/caregivers perceived both positive and negative outcomes of attending musical care activities. Most providers had not had specific training and for many this work was not their primary income source.

Conclusions
There is a wide range of musical care activities during the beginning of life in the UK. Reasons for attending them range from those specific to music and its care potential to seeing them as leisure activities. The findings have implications for the flexibility and role that musical care activities can play during the beginning of life and call for investigation into how musical care activities may be integrated into care.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	Infancy, Musical Care, Music, Parental, Perinatal, Postnatal, Pregnancy, Stepped care, Survey
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Population Health & Policy
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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