Music For Children and young People with Complex Needs

There are around 40,000 children and young people in the UK alone with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties, in special schools and in mainstream education. Research has indicated that provision is at best patchy, despite the widely held belief that music is beneficial, both in its own right and to promote wider development. This book seeks to foster progress in what is still a young discipline by reflecting on contemporary thinking and practice, identifying key issues, introducing recent and ongoing research, and providing practical advice for practitioners including teachers, therapists, and community musicians.

Adam Ockelford has worked in the field of special education needs for more than 20 years and is widely respected as a practitioner, researcher, teacher, and writer. In the 1990s he became Music Education Advisor for the RNIB, where from 2005 he was Director of Education. In 2007 he was appointed
Professor of Music at Roehampton University, after working as a part-time research fellow at the Institute of Education, London. In May 2007 his book In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini was published by Hutchinson.

Part I: Issues