The Arts in Health and Social Care — Is Music Therapy Fit for Purpose?

This article considers the place of the arts therapies within contemporary health and social care provision, from the perspective of a music therapist employed as a senior manager in an end-of-life healthcare institution. Using St. Christopher's Hospice, London, as a case study, the work of a large group of artists, made up of arts therapists, community artists and arts teachers, is profiled, with a particular focus on how they work together, how their work conflicts and overlaps, and the challenges and complexities that service users, members of a multi-professional team, managers and funders all face in understanding what each of the artists has to offer. The question “Is music therapy fit for purpose?” is directed at both the training institutions who educate arts therapies students and the professional bodies who support them and define their work. Their responsibility to understand and articulate the changing environment within which their students and members are expected to practise is placed central to the argument. It is suggested that if music therapy and other arts therapies are to be considered fit for purpose and thus survive the challenges currently facing the health and social care sectors, they may need to reconsider the content of what they teach and revisit their definitions of what arts therapists do.