Our strategic ambitions
Strategy
Making Nordoff and Robbins music therapy accessible to those who need it most, the most isolated and least connected across the UK.
We are calling for music therapy to be integrated into NHS and community strategies to:
1. Support Marmot-aligned population health goals.
2. Improve access to care for marginalised groups.
3. Enhance mental health prevention pathways.
4. Build resilience, inclusion, and emotional wellbeing in communities.
We are ambitious, and also realistic. To meet the rising demand for our services, it is vital to work in partnership with other experts. The unmet need is immense. Let’s consider, for example, children’s mental health, where more than 300,000 are on the waiting list. Each of them is waiting for the transformative connection, joy, and recovery that can be unlocked through music therapy. Children’s mental health is just one area where we can help. We work too with people living with autism, with those recovering from traumatic head injury, people of all ages experiencing mental health issues, and the growing number of people living with dementia.
We are driven by their needs, focusing on those at the sharpest end of need – people who are isolated, vulnerable, and often living outside of any existing service provision or therapeutic support. You can learn more about this in our annual report.
We are determined to succeed. But we recognise we won’t succeed alone. We will work in partnership with the wider ecosystem, extending our reach and impact without expanding our infrastructure. To do this we will:
Integrate music therapy into health and social care systems, building on 60 years of Nordoff Robbins deep academic evidence.
Grow the ecosystem of sustainable music therapy work
Develop a sustainable workforce, through our Master of Music Therapy programme, quality assurance programmes, training for teachers, carers and parents.
Strengthening the case for access to music therapy, by working alongside underserved communities to demonstrate the personal and societal impact of music therapy.
Build on our foundations as a development organisation: developing the practice, workforce, market and case on behalf of our clients.
This is not about marginal year-on-year growth. It’s about transforming our impact through existing infrastructure. We’re not just delivering services; we’re committed to meeting a huge unmet need, and serving people for whom music therapy is a necessity not a nice-to-have.
What do we mean by an ecosystem, and why should we grow it?
We are determined that the value of music therapy is delivered as widely as it is needed.
While we are experts in music therapy, with expertise gained through more than 60 years of deep research and our ongoing commitment to honing our practice, we recognise and respect the wide expertise of others. We will proactively create connections and collaborate with other experts so that together we will bring the life-changing benefits of music therapy to the many thousands of isolated and vulnerable people who need us.
That’s where the wider ecosystem comes in: individuals, organisations, communities, other sectors and policy makers, partner organisations such as hospitals and schools, lead clinicians creating multi-disciplinary teams, and of course parents, family members, and those who themselves need support, and many groups who serve those who could benefit hugely from music therapy but may not even know that it exists. That’s a lot. So, we will continue to reach out. Test and learn if this strategy of generously sharing our expertise, actually works. We’ll continue to pioneer relentlessly the quality practice and benefits of music therapy. That’s how we will ultimately reach many more people in need.
While our own financial stability matters, we are driven by purpose, which means creating as much impact as possible with our always-limited resources. We won’t rest until the huge value of Nordoff and Robbins’ music therapy is widely known as a proven way to help people in need. That means ensuring our work is a recognized, integrated and accessible form of health and social care for all who need it across the UK. Taking this approach, together with many partners, we can and will amplify our impact on the health of the nation.
