Joy is a music therapist with 20 years’ experience working with children, adults and families.
A large part of her work has been with people with a learning disability and with people experiencing attachment issues. This is an area of expertise in Joy’s work and she enjoys tailoring her approach to each individual or family.
Joy loves to work collaboratively with teams, using music therapy to bring about creative expression, reflection and positive change. Joy meets regularly with arts therapies colleagues to continually evaluate, design and develop approaches together within the wider team of practitioners at The Family Place.
Joy wanted to be a music therapist at an early age, as it combines her love of working with people in a helping relationship and her love of music. She completed a music degree at Kingston University and then a postgraduate diploma in music therapy at Roehampton Institute, where the focus was on psychodynamic relationship theory.
This was the foundation of her work, following which Joy continued to expand her therapeutic learning over the years – including supervision skills, person-centred listening, developmental and compassion-focused trainings, along with Theraplay Level 1.
Joy is a registered music therapy supervisor and facilitates the Supervision Network for the British Association for Music Therapy (BAMT), UK-wide. She completed an MA in Therapeutic Music Studies with University of the West of England more recently, including modules in leadership, supervision and evidence work-based learning.
Joy has presented her work at the BAMT international conference and at an NHS Wales Therapies and Health Science conference on multi-disciplinary work, along with several poster presentations, winning a conference award. Joy is trained in Neurologic Music Therapy, acknowledging and utilising the specific properties of the way music is processed in the brain, with a focus on healing and enabling improved quality of life.
Central to Joy’s focus is the desire to promote healthy relationships with self and others. Her community choir is the best example of enjoying being in harmony with others. Each voice is individual, unique and yet part of something much bigger and beautiful because of its diversity.
It is this harmony and the joy of listening and being heard that she brings to the work at The Family Place to support families.
