This January we are excited to share our Sustainability Programme Review – which ties together our learning from the series of Support Visits delivered over the last year.

Since we launched our pilot UK programme ‘Bringing it All Back Home’ we forecast that our Skill-Sharing programmes had the potential to reach up to 505 children and adults. Last year we returned to many of the same locations, from the South East of England to the Highlands of Scotland, to deliver a series of Support Visits and learn from our Partners – who fed back to us on support needs, and the impact of a project on the service provided, the people cared for, and practitioners’ own professional development.

Take a look at our UK Sustainability Report to see a total overview of our findings, which centres the experiences of care practitioners, managers and music therapists, as well as the people they support. Read the executive summary here.

Highlights included learning that 100% of managers considered the introductory training to have had a ‘significant impact’ on participating practitioners, and 100% of both managers and practitioners noted a resulting confidence increase in practitioners. We measured recurring benefits across all client groups, including non-verbal communication and social motivation, and were also able to identify 12 aspects of sustainable practice, and 11 common barriers to sustainable practice, which we will be sharing as good practice and using to strengthen our own training in future.

Findings from the Sustainability Programme have also inspired new ideas and approaches to providing skill-sharing in the UK: we will be launching our Motivation Programme this year, as well as the UK Partner Bulletin, both in response to the suggestions of our partners.

We look forward to sharing the progress of our sustainability activities with you in 2019!