Music therapy hits the right note with youngsters
New music therapy sessions are already benefitting young patients are two hospitals, staff have said.
The programme has been implemented in both the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and Skylark Ward at Kettering General Hospital (KGH).
It will soon be introduced at the neonatal ward at Northampton General Hospital (NGH), where it is already helping older children.
Sessions are delivered by Miranda Bray from the charity Thomas's Fund, who says music therapy for babies helps "relax them, and get used to external stimulation".
Each session is tailored to meet the need and age of the child involved.
Music therapy delivered to the young children on the neonatal ward features an "ocean disk" instrument.
Miranda Bray says the disk "simulates womb sounds" and is "matched to the infant's breathing rhythm".
This leads to stabilisation of their breathing and heart rate.
Mabel, a 28-day-old baby, has received music therapy whilst on the NICU ward.
Her mum Georgia said: "She's really settled after singing. She just sleeps through it.
"When I had my first child during Covid, there was nothing like this to support them."
The therapy sessions are funded by the National Lottery.
After initially acting as a pilot site for music therapy in neonatal units, KGH decided to make it a permanent fixture months later.
Jane Lafferty, matron of the neonatal unit at KGH, said: "We received some great feedback from parents," and sessions were "well received" by babies.
Children and young people up to the age of 18 can receive the music sessions at both Northampton General Hospital and Kettering General Hospital.
Five-year-old Kairo is on Skylark Ward at KGH and has benefited from music therapy.
His mum Chinyere Ikey said sessions "break up the day" and allowed her son to "do something different."
Staff on the Skylark ward say music therapy sessions have a positive impact on patients, like Kairo.
Claire Green is the play specialist coordinator and said the session turned Kairo from being "introverted and not so sure" to his confidence "blossoming" and the sessions becoming "child led".
Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Children to get music therapy at two hospitals
Birth partners allowed overnight, if 'fully clothed'
Hospital confirms Raac maternity ward rebuild
Kettering General Hospital
Northampton General Hospital
Thomas's Fund
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Health Secretary calls on supermarkets to tackle obesity
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the government will work with major supermarkets to make healthy food choices easier for consumers. He outlines plans to reduce calorie intake across the population, tackling rising obesity and easing pressure on the NHS without the need for additional taxes. .
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tories slam obesity plan, urge farm tax rethink
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately says speaking to supermarkets is 'not the answer' to the UK's health problems as she argues that obesity is about personal responsibility. She goes on to criticise the government for threatening family farms with their tax policy while claiming to promote healthier living. .
Gizmodo
2 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Scientists Launch Wild New Project to Build a Human Genome From Scratch
A team of UK-based researchers is going where no scientist has dared to go—writing artificial human DNA from scratch. They're hoping the project will answer fundamental questions about the human genome and transform our understanding of health and disease. But the research topic is, for obvious reasons, controversial. Scientists have largely steered clear of trying to create full synthetic human genomes, wary of propelling us into a dystopian, Gattaca-esque future full of designer babies. Now, the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest medical charity, has coughed up about $11.7 million (£10 million) to kickstart the Synthetic Human Genome Project (SynHG). The charity says that the benefits outweigh the risks. The technology, it says, could be used to create new medical treatments, like designer cell-based therapies and virus-resistant tissue transplantation. Jason Chin, a professor at the University of Oxford, will lead the project in collaboration with several other UK-based universities and research centers. Over the next half-decade, Chin and his colleagues hope to create the foundational tools, technologies, and methods to allow researchers to create genomes from scratch. 'The ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly alter the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,' Chin said in a statement. The Wellcome Trust also contributed significant funds to the Human Genome Project, which was completed 25 years ago. Actually building a human genome from nothing is even more ambitious and is expected to take years, maybe decades. Chin's team recently synthesized the complete genome of E. coli bacteria, but that's small potatoes next to a human genome, which is roughly 700 times larger. 'If you think about the human genome, it's more than just a set of genes on a string,' Julian Sale, a group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, told The Guardian. 'There's an awful lot of the genome, sometimes called the dark matter of the genome, that we don't know what it does. The idea is that if you can build genomes successfully, you can fully understand them.' The scientists' first step will be to create a full, synthetic human chromosome, which researchers plan to tackle in the next five to ten years. Unlike genome editing, which works on one or a handful of genes at once, genome synthesis allows researchers to alter DNA at a larger scale. It could help determine how large swaths of our DNA—including those we don't know much about—determine our health and characteristics. 'The ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly alter the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,' Chin said in a statement. Some researchers worry that the ability to write human genetic code could give researchers a scary amount of control over human living systems. It could one day be used to create synthetic humans, biological weapons, or even creatures with human DNA, Bill Earnshaw, a genetic scientist at Edinburgh University, told BBC News. But he adds that the technology necessary to do those things is still pretty far off. The project is attempting to tackle the thorny ethical issues of creating a human genome head-on. The Wellcome Trust is funding a parallel research effort into the social and ethical issues of creating human genomes in a lab, led by Joy Zhang at the University of Kent. 'This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in as upfront [a] way as possible,' Tom Collins, senior research manager at Wellcome, told BBC News.
