No abstract

My presentation is about my work with multiply handicapped children. When I speak of multiply handicapped children, I am referring to children with severe disabilities who have neurological problems in combination with mental retardation. They may also have sensory problems. These children are sometimes also labeled profoundly multiply disabled or severely impaired.These children present unique problems in music therapy and other treatment settings. Two of them stand out to me. One is that the level of functioning for many is extremely low, leading in my experience to many instances where, even in the best circumstances, they spend a great deal of time with no discernible responses. The other is that their responses are extremely inconsistent so that it is difficult to either predict what will help them to respond at any particular time or with more consistency. I believe that this latter problem is due to their severe neurological involvement. As I have worked with these children and read of other music therapists' work, I have frequently wondered if there is something that I am not doing or that I could be doing differently to remediate these problems. Of course, I always work to do what I can to help them respond and to improve the consistency of their responses, but I believe that the problems that I have mentioned are due to their particular neurological make-up and level of functioning rather than to me not doing something correctly.