The Otakar Kraus Music Trust

Margaret Lobo founded the Otakar Kraus Music Trust in 1990 and has since touched thousands of lives through her work using music therapy with mums, dads, children and babies. She is also the Area Coordinator for the Association of Professional Music Therapists (APMT) in West London. Here Margaret talks to Bongo Club about the work of the Otakar Kraus Music Trust and how music can play an important role in helping children with special needs to develop.

Margaret Lobo had maintained a successful career at Esso for some twenty years, but decided to give up her position there to provide music therapy for people from all walks of life. She and her husband built a music studio in their back garden when they first started up the trust in 1990 and their work has grown from their base at home ever since. They started out with two clients: two parents of autistic children, and gradually the work of the trust expanded with them providing just under 2000 individual music therapy sessions in 2006.

The Otakar Kraus Music Trust is now the main service provider for music therapy in West London, with fifteen outreach centres and six music therapists working for the organisation. The trust has just received three years of funding from BBC Children in Need and will continue to set up Music Club in schools, where groups of children work together with a music therapist. In these sessions, the therapist really extends what you can do with music, movement and creativity. "It is amazing to see," says Margaret. "You get children interacting together with movement and you see them start to share. BBC Children in Need were so impressed by it that they have agreed to fund a whole programme for three years."

The trust has also been running similar music sessions in The White House in Hampton for the last eighteen months, where music therapy is always combined with the Music Club. The club has been so successful that the trust has just received another two terms of funding from Richmond Council to continue the work. "As parents hear about it, they become interested in their children attending, so there's quite a waiting list," comments Margaret.

"The mother baby group that we've been doing has been in Kew and we're starting a new group shortly in Twickenham with an organisation called Me too. At a centre in Kew we also have different groups from different schools coming in once a week to have a Music Club session. With these special needs children coming in from mainstream schools for music therapy, what we're finding is that children that wouldn't participate at all in music that goes on in the schools are now participating. The music teachers in schools are now finding that children who have worked with us, are now working with them. So, you're not only bringing the effects of music therapy to the family, to the child, to mother, father, sibling etc - but also the teachers that are working with these children. So we also run workshops a couple of times a year, purely for teachers, which is very important."

Margaret is also quick to point out how much of a strain caring for a disabled child can have on parents. "When you realise that 1 in 53 children are now diagnosed with autism, when a mother has a child with a disability they go through a lot on their own. I have parents coming to sessions that have not slept properly once since their child was born," she says. "We had one little five year old boy here, whose parents had never once been able to leave him for even one minute on his own. He came here for music therapy and for a whole year either one of the parents would sit in on the sessions. Then one day, the therapist said to the father "Let's try leaving him today and see what happens". So he left and they explained that Daddy was going for a little while but coming right back. The little boy cried for about two minutes and then after that it was all music, and the therapist worked the music around him. The father came back 40 minutes later and he couldn't believe it. He cried, and said: "this is the first time that we have ever left our child". After another six months in the music therapy sessions, that child was not only able to leave his parents and be on his own with other children, but he was able to join a nursery and he is now in mainstream school."

The Otakar Kraus Music Trust fund over 75% of the work that they do with children and parents. Margaret talks of some families where there are real internal issues and explains that the trust will often identify a need within a family for music therapy, provide the funding and deliver it. Often Margaret's therapy work also takes place as a consequence of mothers and fathers clubbing together to provide music therapy for their children, because there is no other access to such therapy in their area.

The Otakar Kraus Music Trust is one of the service providers of music therapy in London. The trust also has a centre in East Sussex. If you are outside of these areas, you can still contact Margaret Lobo at the trust for advice, but the Association of Professional Music Therapists (APMT) can also guide and advise you.

Otakar Kraus Music Trust
http://www.okmtrust.co.uk/

Association of Professional Music Therapists
http://www.apmt.org/

Funding for music activities

If you're a practitioner looking for funding for music activities, your project could be eligible for funding from Youth Music's First Steps programme.

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