This review was undertaken by Daphne Rickson at MThNZ request, to support music therapists who work or wish to work in Child Development Services. Music therapists have been asked to provide evidence of the potential for music therapy to support children who have a developmental disability, ultimately to promote utilisation of music therapy within CDS.

Given the breadth of the topic, Daphne has engaged in a ‘scoping review’, undertaken to identify key characteristics of music therapy and child development and the types of evidence that are available in the field. “Scoping reviews do not aim to produce a critically appraised and synthesised result/answer to a particular question […] (but) provide an overview or map of the evidence” (Munn et al., 2018, p. 3).

To manage the large pool of data, only peer reviewed articles published in the five-year period between (2018-2022) have been included.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE A RIGOROUS PROCESS WAS FOLLOWED, THE DRAFT PUBLISHED HERE HAS NOT BEEN PEER REVIEWED.

However, the review also republishes (with permission) reviews that are associated with an evaluation of services provided by Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre Trust (Field et al., 2020) and Music Therapy for Autistic Children (Rickson, 2022).  

Please take care if referencing any part of this document to refer to

1) Rickson (2023) Music therapy supporting child development, unpublished;

2) Field, A., Butler, R., Were, L., & Lowery, O. (2020). “From closed to flowering”: An evaluation of services provided by Raukatauri Music Therapy Trust. Creative Commons;

or 3) Rickson, D. (2022). Music therapy with tamariki takiwātanga. Chapter 3 In Music therapy with autistic children in New Zealand: Haumanu ā-puoro mā ngā tamariki takiwātanga i Aotearoa (pp. 35-61). Palgrave Macmillan.

REFERR TO ORIGINAL SOURCES WHENEVER POSSIBLE