Originally, my service-learning for the semester was going to be with Lexington Parks and Recreation. I was going to be attending bowling and horsemanship events with disabled adults. Unfortunately, due to background checks, starting dates for events, and the onset of COVID-19, I was unable to start my service-learning with the Parks and Recreation department. However, I feel like this placement would still be a really good placement in the future for students. I ended up completing my service-learning assignments with a music therapy group I provide for autistic teens and young adults.
I have been providing music therapy services for this group since October, and I have loved it! The group originally took place in Lebanon, KY every other week for an hour. However, with the recent COVID-19 social distancing and stay-at-home orders, the group has been taking place via telehealth weekly for 30 minutes. I see anywhere from 4-7 group members during a session. The participants range in age from young teen to young adult, are men and women, and require different levels of support. After meeting with the group several times, I chose to work on social and communication goals with participants.
Social and communication goals were chosen as the group members, and their parents, have expressed a need for wanting to participate in the community more, through participating in extracurricular school events, jobs, etc. In the beginning the group had three members and has steadily grown to have seven. This growth has made it difficult at times to navigate group dynamics, and work on social and communication goals. However, I am happy to see more people in the community want to participate in music therapy, and social settings can be unpredictable, so having this changing dynamic has worked to address that. I am still working on meeting many social and communication goals, and at this time that looks different due to telehealth. Progress on goals right now may not look the same, and I am okay with that.
Before I began to work with this group, I truly did not know what to expect. All I had been told was a group of autistic teens in Lebanon, KY. First, as someone not originally from Kentucky, I did not know what to expect with Lebanon. It was definitely more rural than what I was expecting. I had been told by one the parents, who acts as the group liaison, that the group members need more community participation opportunities. Considering the rural nature of Lebanon, I definitely understood why there was such a need for music therapy.
At the start of leading this group, I did not really have any expectations for the personalities and supports needed of group members. However, I was surprised when, a couple weeks into the group, I had two girls show up to the group. Autism is more prevalent in males (which could be due to diagnosing tools, expectations, and bias, but I digress), so I was not expecting to have a female group member, let alone two. However, their addition to the group has been great and the group dynamic works really well.
Working on social and communication goals with this group has been a fun and educative experience. When looking into the literature on autistic people’s participation in the community, it was not shocking to discover that there is a need for more opportunities and resources for this participation. I also found an article that compared rural and urban community participation and was once again not surprised to find that disabled people living in rural communities do not make as strong of connections with their peers than do urban people. I began to reframe why I was working on social and communication goals, and how I could show my group members how to transfer what we worked on in sessions to their community. This task has proven more difficult than expected, especially with COVID-19 restrictions, but I look forward to re-examining this when I begin to work with my group members again in-person.
From this group, I have learned how to adapt quickly. In the beginning, I would never know who to expect when I came to the group, as we were steadily growing in size. This meant that I would need to quickly assess supports levels and needs and adapt my session plan quickly. Sometimes I even needed to completely scrap the session plan and come up with activities on the spot. Learning how to adapt this quickly has made me a better music therapist, and overall person, and has shown me that I am prepared for many situations.
Within my ability to adapt, however, I am still working on learning to recognize when an activity is not going as planned. I like to hold onto how I thought something would look in my head, even if it is not working like that during the actual session. Sometimes the best course of action is to recognize that a plan is not meeting the goals as thought, and it’s time to try something new. This has been even more challenging with my limited resources during telehealth, but something I am still working on weekly in order to build my skills as a music therapist.
Something that has continuously been a challenge for me throughout providing music therapy to this group is the amount of parent participation. When the group was in-person, the parents and guardians would sit in on the group. This was mostly due to the space we met in- a large room at a sheltered workshop. There wasn’t really another place for the parents to go. However, it felt very awkward to know that the parents were in the back listening, and sometimes their conversations became a little loud and distracting. And other times, parents would want to jump in with song suggestions and helping with answers to questions.
Providing services via telehealth has helped with parents jumping into sessions, as most of my group members get set-up with the group online without their parents. There is one parent who is still actively involved in the telehealth session, as her son does not primarily communicate verbally so she helps with prompt levels. However, telehealth has provided a whole new set of problems with parents jumping in and un-muting microphones to ask questions, such as wanting to know the meeting ID so someone else can come to the group. This is something I have slowly been working on, and I have since communicated with parents that I am capping the online group to the original 7 group members, and participants should not join more than 10 minutes into the session time. Overall, this has helped me learn to communicate better with parents and guardians, and advocate for what is best for both myself and my group members.
This music therapy group has been one of the highlights of my time here so far in Lexington. Prior to doing this group, I felt a little out of place. I was doing music therapy in settings completely out of my comfort zone (Good Samaritan behavioral health and Best Friends day center). Being able to provide music therapy to a group where I have experience and comfort has helped with my confidence and has provided well-needed breaths of air. It has also solidified my interest in working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As I continue to provide telehealth for the foreseeable future, I know I have a lot to work on and contemplate. However, I am excited to see how my skills as a music therapist grow after this experience. I am also very excited to get back to working with this group in-person, as they are truly a great group of people to do music therapy with. When I leave this group one day, I hope to have set up a good group foundation for both the incoming music therapist, as well as the group members themselves. Although the group members still have a lot to accomplish with social and communication goals, and a lot to work through with figuring out how to navigate telehealth, I am confident progress can still be made, even if that progress looks different. For me, I can already tell that I am a more confident music therapist not that I know how to adapt to situations and provide my group members with services even during these uncertain times.